Cast in Deathless Bronze: Andrew Rowan, the Spanish-American War, and the Origins of American Empire by Donald Tunnicliff Rice

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cast in Deathless Bronze: Andrew Rowan, the Spanish-American War, and the Origins of American Empire by Donald Tunnicliff Rice John Lawrence Tone Donald Tunnicliff Rice. 2016. Cast in Deathless Bronze: Andrew Rowan, the Spanish-American War, and the Origins of American Empire. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press. 370 pp. ISBN: 978-1-943665-43-3. Andrew Rowan played a small role in the American invasion of Cuba in 1898 by taking a message to Calixto García, the commander of Cuban insurgents operating in eastern Cuba, related to his assisting troop landings at Guantánamo and Daiquirí, just east of Santiago. I didn't know there was much more to the story until I read this enchanting book by Donald Tunnicliff Rice. Rice is actually writing about three separate things: Rowan, an article about Rowan written by Elbert Hubbard, and the Spanish-American War. On this last subject there are better books, and some readers may find themselves shaking their heads and skimming portions. Where the story of the war and Rowan are closely linked, Rice is on solid ground, and skillfully interweaves the two narratives. He provides interesting details about García, and the chapters on the war in the Philippines are very good. Nevertheless, readers are better off turning elsewhere for analysis of why the United States went to war with Spain, why Filipinos resisted the American occupation of their homeland, and other important subjects. That criticism aside, Rice is both authoritative and entertaining when dealing with his main topics: Rowan and the pamphlet written by Hubbard. Rowan, though a little-known historical figure, merits this [End Page 236] extended biographical treatment. Sometimes getting to know the minor characters in a story can be revealing, and that is the case here. Recounting Rowan's time at West Point, Rice tells us a lot in a few words about how the place operated in late 1870s and early 1880s. Upon graduation, Rowan served in dreary frontier posts with little hope of advancement, until a chance came to work for the Military Information Division (MID). Rowan became a spy, and everyone likes a good spy story. Rowan gathered intelligence across the border in Canada, then seen as a potential threat to the United States. He later participated in surveying a route for an intercontinental railroad to unite North and South America, a project never completed. He mapped the northern border and then created maps of Cuba on the eve of the Spanish-American War. While he was there taking his "message" to García, Rowan gathered intelligence, especially on roads and topography. The information he brought back went largely "unheeded" (87) and had very little impact on the outcome of the war, but it had a huge impact on Rowan himself, who rose to become a captain in the 19th Infantry, and was deployed to the Philippines in August 1899. There he participated in the hellish and shameful counterinsurgency campaign to crush Filipino independence. Rowan, like many other U.S. officers, commanded soldiers to make war on civilians by destroying crops, livestock, and homes. Likely he knew of the "water cure" (much like water boarding) and other tortures committed against suspected insurgents and their civilian supporters. Rowan continued to gather intelligence and to map the area under his command and seemed to be particularly effective at organizing his zone of occupation politically. By the time all this happened, Rowan was famous, because Elbert Hubbard, a "long-haired megalomaniac," had written "A Message to García" for the March issue of his periodical, The Philistine. I found the best parts of Rice's book to be those about Hubbard, who later recalled (112) that the article on Rowan "leaped hot from my heart." A mixture of almost no knowledge about Rowan or García and the inventions of an over-heated imagination, Hubbard's article never added much to our understanding of the war in Cuba. As Rice points out, many other people, especially journalists, had been embedded with the Cuban insurgents for some time and had been getting messages back and forth. Cubans in New York, Washington, and Cuba itself did the heavy lifting to make...