A Message to Garcia is a widely distributed essay written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899, expressing the value of individual initiative and conscientiousness in work.

The essay's primary example is a dramatized version of a daring escapade performed by an American soldier, First Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan, just before the Spanish–American War.

The essay describes Rowan carrying a message from President William McKinley to "Gen. Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban insurgents somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba—no one knew where".

It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing—"Carry a message to Garcia!

"A Message to Garcia was originally published as filler without a title in the March 1899 issue of The Philistine, a periodical which, at that time, was written entirely by Hubbard.

Hubbard's Roycroft Press, the publishing arm of an arts and crafts community he founded in East Aurora, New York, reprinted and sold the essay in a variety of bindings—suede, embossed, paperback, and so on—and as paid promotional literature for organizations as disparate as Wanamaker's department store, the Boy Scouts of America, and the United States Navy.

In Hubbard's version of Rowan's journey, President McKinley needed to communicate with Gen. Calixto Garcia, a leader of the Cuban insurgents.

How the 'fellow by the name of Rowan' took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia – are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

[5] With the help of the U.S. consul in Kingston, he connected with the Cuban Revolutionary Junta, some of whose members transported him by open boat during one of their trips to the southeastern coast of Cuba.

After a five-day horseback journey to Manatí Bay on Cuba's north coast, they "drew a little cockle-shell of a boat from under a mangrove bush" and set sail for Florida.

The first, a silent movie made in 1916 by Thomas A. Edison, Inc., was directed by Richard Ridgely and featured Robert Conness, Mabel Trunnelle, and Charles Sutton.

It featured John Boles as Andrew Rowan, Wallace Beery, Barbara Stanwyck, Alan Hale, Herbert Mundin, Mona Barrie, and Enrique Acosta as Garcia—an "agreeable embroidery" according to Leslie Halliwell.