Cast in Deathless Bronze

Andrew Rowan, the Spanish-American War, and the Origins of American Empire

Donald Tunnicliff Rice

• Publisher: West Virginia University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781943665433, 9781943665426
• eBook ISBN: 9781943665440
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

In 1898, when war with Spain seemed inevitable, Andrew Summers Rowan, an American army lieutenant from West Virginia, was sent on a secret mission to Cuba. He was to meet with General Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban rebels, in order to gather information for a U.S. invasion. Months later, after the war was fought and won, a flamboyant entrepreneur named Elbert Hubbard wrote an account of Rowan's mission titled "A Message to García." It sold millions of copies, and Rowan became the equivalent of a modern-day rock star. His fame resulted in hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, radio shows, and two movies. Even today he is held up as an exemplar of bravery and loyalty. The problem is that nothing Hubbard wrote about Rowan was true.
 
Donald Tunnicliff Rice reveals the facts behind the story of "A Message to García" while using Rowan's biography as a window into the history of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War, and the Moro Rebellion. The result is a compellingly written narrative containing many details never before published in any form, and also an accessible perspective on American diplomatic and military history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. “It Is Meritorious to Be a Boy at West Point”
• 2. Becoming an Intelligence Officer
• 3. “A Most Perilous Undertaking”
• 4. America Takes a Step toward Empire
• 5. The Creation of an American Myth
• 6. Exactly Where Are the Philippines?
• 7. A Glorious Undertaking
• 8. Captain Rowan in Command
• 9. An Idyllic Spot to Spend the War
• 10. Major Rowan in Love and War
• 11. The Complexities of Retirement
• 12. The Myth Lives On
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index