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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
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It was not until the next morning, October 10, that the whole stupefying story spilled out in a six-column headline:
EVANGELINA CISNEROS RESCUED BY THE
JOURNAL
Beneath the headline was a story by Charles Duval, datelined October 7 Havana and October 9 Key West:
I have broken the bars of Recojidas and have set free the beautiful captive of monster Weyler, restoring her to her friends and relatives, and doing by strength, skill and strategy what could not be accomplished by petition and urgent request of the Pope.Weyler could blind the Queen to the real character of Evangelina, but he could not build a jail that would hold against
Journal
enterprise when properly set to work.
“Charles Duval” was the pen name of Karl Decker, a
Journal
reporter who had arrived in Havana on August 28, shortly after Bryson’s expulsion. A native of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and the well-educated son of a Confederacy colonel, Decker had been a rising star in the paper’s Washington bureau before his assignment to Cuba. The paper described him as a handsome young man, six feet tall, two hundred pounds, “straight and lithe as an Indian.” It is not altogether clear why he was chosen for the assignment, beyond that he was strong, daring, and willing. Decker comported himself in Havana as a genial and carefree young man bent on having a grand time at his employer’s expense, a role that fit him comfortably and that did nothing to incur the suspicions of Spanish spies. He gave expensive dinners to friends at the Inglaterra and drove about in an open carriage smoking cigars. Occasionally he filed a story to New York, but he avoided the
Journal
’s bureau so as not to implicate other reporters in what he was about to do.
33
Journal
reporter who had arrived in Havana on August 28, shortly after Bryson’s expulsion. A native of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and the well-educated son of a Confederacy colonel, Decker had been a rising star in the paper’s Washington bureau before his assignment to Cuba. The paper described him as a handsome young man, six feet tall, two hundred pounds, “straight and lithe as an Indian.” It is not altogether clear why he was chosen for the assignment, beyond that he was strong, daring, and willing. Decker comported himself in Havana as a genial and carefree young man bent on having a grand time at his employer’s expense, a role that fit him comfortably and that did nothing to incur the suspicions of Spanish spies. He gave expensive dinners to friends at the Inglaterra and drove about in an open carriage smoking cigars. Occasionally he filed a story to New York, but he avoided the
Journal
’s bureau so as not to implicate other reporters in what he was about to do.
33
Knowing nothing of Spanish or Havana, Decker needed accomplices to complete his mission, and he found them at the U.S. consulate. The historian W. Joseph Campbell has uncovered startling evidence in the papers of Fitzhugh Lee that U.S. diplomatic staff were up to their necks in Decker’s adventure. One of the reporter’s key contacts on the island was Donnell Rockwell, a junior staffer at the consulate who nurtured a Bryson-like obsession with Evangelina. Lee’s papers suggest it was Rockwell who first hatched the notion of springing the girl. He had already passed her an instrument with which to file through her prison bars, although she had not been able to use it effectively. It was by exploiting Rockwell’s diplomatic privileges that Decker was able to visit Evangelina in jail before Weyler held her incommunicado. It was probably Rockwell, as well, who introduced Decker to the three men who would directly assist in the jailbreak: Carlos F. Carbonell, William B. MacDonald, and Francisco (Paco) De Besche. Carbonell, a Cuban banker, was an intimate of Consul General Lee who would later join Lee’s staff.
35
35
While there is no evidence that Fitzhugh Lee was directly involved in Decker’s plot, it is difficult to imagine him an innocent bystander. Lee was something of a cowboy. Bluff and outspoken, he chafed at State Department procedure, sympathized with the Cuban insurgents, and reveled in covert operations. On arriving in Havana, he had developed a network of spies (or, as he called them, scouts) to keep him abreast of local developments. It is clear from his letters and an unpublished memoir that Rockwell was operating with at least his tacit blessing. Whatever his precise role, Lee would have been anxious that neither he nor the State Department be implicated in a jailbreak, so he left Cuba a week after Decker’s arrival and on landing in New York made his public show of dismissing the
Journal
’s Cisneros campaign.
36
Journal
’s Cisneros campaign.
36
Even with accomplices and local knowledge, Decker was still short a plan for rescuing the girl. The prison was located in one of the meaner sectors of Havana, surrounded, as Decker wrote, “by a huddle of squalid huts occupied by negroes and Chinamen and reeking to heaven by day and night.”
37
He walked the crooked alleys on every side of the building, scanning its thick walls, barred windows, and parapets for an opportunity. He brainstormed with his associates, principally Carbonell and MacDonald. They considered a violent daylight raid, but with the well-guarded Havana arsenal in the next block and a military barracks directly behind the prison, they did not like their odds. They tried to bribe the Recojidas guards, apparently without success. They were down to dynamiting their way into the prison before someone thought to ask Evangelina if she had any suggestions. They smuggled her a note. The “innocent child” immediately replied with a comprehensive plan to drug her cellmates with opium-laced sweetmeats, dissolve the bars on her windows with acid, and scale the prison walls with a long rope. She offered diagrams and suggested a series of stop-and-go signals involving lit cigars and white handkerchiefs.
37
He walked the crooked alleys on every side of the building, scanning its thick walls, barred windows, and parapets for an opportunity. He brainstormed with his associates, principally Carbonell and MacDonald. They considered a violent daylight raid, but with the well-guarded Havana arsenal in the next block and a military barracks directly behind the prison, they did not like their odds. They tried to bribe the Recojidas guards, apparently without success. They were down to dynamiting their way into the prison before someone thought to ask Evangelina if she had any suggestions. They smuggled her a note. The “innocent child” immediately replied with a comprehensive plan to drug her cellmates with opium-laced sweetmeats, dissolve the bars on her windows with acid, and scale the prison walls with a long rope. She offered diagrams and suggested a series of stop-and-go signals involving lit cigars and white handkerchiefs.
Decker and company discarded the acid idea as impractical but otherwise adopted Evangelina’s plan. Scaling the prison walls with a rope was too daunting, so they rented, across a narrow alley from the prison, a house whose roof was level with a ledge on the prison wall. A long plank laid between would bring them within reach of Evangelina’s cell block. They made their first attempt in the middle of a Tuesday night under a moon that seemed to Decker as bright as the midday sun. Instead of a plank, they stretched a twelve-foot ladder across the alley and clambered to the prison ledge. “No man engaged in that enterprise,” wrote Decker, “will ever forget that twelve foot walk across the sagging, decrepit ladder.” The rescuers advanced to the window identified by Evangelina in her diagram and found her behind it, dressed inconspicuously in a dark dress. She clasped the hands of her rescuers through the bars before they took out their saw and got to work. The iron seemed to ring like an alarm with each pass of the teeth. After an hour they were only partway through the bar and they decided to return the next night with better tools. Evangelina went back to bed.
On the second attempt, everything went like clockwork. The ladder was raised without a sound. The men slid across in their stocking feet, carrying a pair of Stillson wrenches, with which they snapped the half-cut bar. Decker used brute strength to bend it upward far enough for Evanglina to slip through and taste freedom for the first time in thirteen months. He noticed “one fleeting smile of ineffable happiness” on her face before she scampered fearlessly across the ladder to the rented house. Minutes later she was rushing over the cobblestones in a closed carriage.
38
38
The original Tueday-night plan had called for Evangelina to be spirited aboard a regularly scheduled U.S.-bound steamship on Wednesday morning. The one-day delay meant the girl had to hole up in Carbonell’s Havana home for forty-eight hours awaiting the next boat. Carbonell kept cash on hand to bribe any policemen who came looking for her, and a revolver in case money was insufficient. Lee’s memoir says that as Evangelina read newspaper reports of her escape and the search for her, she became increasingly frightened and vowed to kill herself rather than surrender to the Spanish.
On the evening she was to leave, Carbonell dressed her as a boy, stuck an unlit cigar in her mouth, and walked with her the two blocks from his home to the wharf, where she safely boarded a launch to the passenger ship
Seneca.
As they approached the ship, Decker and the purser induced the Spanish policeman on board to take a drink with them in the dining room, and Evangelina was smuggled into a stateroom by the quartermaster. The steamer departed for New York without incident.
Seneca.
As they approached the ship, Decker and the purser induced the Spanish policeman on board to take a drink with them in the dining room, and Evangelina was smuggled into a stateroom by the quartermaster. The steamer departed for New York without incident.
Evangelina spent much of her journey in the company of Walter B. Barker, a U.S. diplomatic staffer. Barker was another of Lee’s confidants, a fellow veteran of the Confederate army, and a man of similar style. He had recently been reprimanded by the State Department for trying to smuggle correspondence from rebel soldiers to the Junta through consular channels. A week before Evangelina’s escape, he had trampled protocol by cabling an urgent last-minute request for leave, pleading unspecified health concerns. He had all of his approvals in place by October 4. On October 8, the day after Evangelina’s rescue, he hustled from his post to Havana, boarding the
Seneca
with her on the ninth. On disembarking in New York, he told the
Journal
that he had not seen Evangelina until the second day out and that he had no idea how she got on board. The
World,
however, quoted the ship’s captain as saying that on her first evening at sea she took a promenade on deck and met some of the passengers. “Among them,” the captain reported, “was Walter B. Barker, United States Consul at Sagua. She addressed him in Spanish with an air which seemed to me as if she had met him before.”
39
Seneca
with her on the ninth. On disembarking in New York, he told the
Journal
that he had not seen Evangelina until the second day out and that he had no idea how she got on board. The
World,
however, quoted the ship’s captain as saying that on her first evening at sea she took a promenade on deck and met some of the passengers. “Among them,” the captain reported, “was Walter B. Barker, United States Consul at Sagua. She addressed him in Spanish with an air which seemed to me as if she had met him before.”
39
While Barker was acting as Evangelina’s chaperone aboard the
Seneca,
his consular colleague, Donnell Rockwell, was being interrogated by Spanish officials who suspected him of connivance in the jailbreak. He refuted their accusations, but within hours of the grilling, he too had applied for unscheduled leave from Cuba, citing an unspecified illness. His request was quickly approved.
40
Seneca,
his consular colleague, Donnell Rockwell, was being interrogated by Spanish officials who suspected him of connivance in the jailbreak. He refuted their accusations, but within hours of the grilling, he too had applied for unscheduled leave from Cuba, citing an unspecified illness. His request was quickly approved.
40
In the days after the escape, the
Journal
reported that its offices in Havana were under close surveillance. The houses of several prominent Cubans were said to have been ransacked as part of a search ranging from “the brothels on Azuacata Street to a convent on the outskirts of the city.” A Spanish cruiser launched a search in response to reports that Evangelina was headed to Key West in a small boat.
41
Journal
reported that its offices in Havana were under close surveillance. The houses of several prominent Cubans were said to have been ransacked as part of a search ranging from “the brothels on Azuacata Street to a convent on the outskirts of the city.” A Spanish cruiser launched a search in response to reports that Evangelina was headed to Key West in a small boat.
41
Back in New York, Hearst hashed and rehashed the rescue story from every conceivable angle while awaiting Evangelina’s arrival. The jailbreak was described as “the most daring coup in the history of the war.”
Journal
writers strained to express the enormity of the achievement. General Bradley Johnson compared it favorably to Bollman’s unsuccessful attempt to free Lafayette from an Austrian jail at Olmütz. Murat Halstead claimed that one had to go all the way back to the hairsbreadth escape of Mary Queen of Scots from her imprisonment in Loch Leven Castle for an appropriate parallel.
42
Journal
writers strained to express the enormity of the achievement. General Bradley Johnson compared it favorably to Bollman’s unsuccessful attempt to free Lafayette from an Austrian jail at Olmütz. Murat Halstead claimed that one had to go all the way back to the hairsbreadth escape of Mary Queen of Scots from her imprisonment in Loch Leven Castle for an appropriate parallel.
42
Not content with tooting its own horn, the
Journal
filled its entire front page on October 11 with letters and accolades, some spontaneous, others no doubt solicited. Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, Clara Barton, Lady Rothschild, and other signatories of the Evangelina petitions wrote to express their joy and gratitude.
The Times
of London and the Baltimore
Sun,
among other papers, doffed their caps to Hearst, as did rafts of governors, senators, and congressmen. “Surely no feat of American journalism can compare with the enterprise and chivalry displayed by the
Journal
in this, its latest triumph,” declared Senator Stephen Elkins.
43
Journal
filled its entire front page on October 11 with letters and accolades, some spontaneous, others no doubt solicited. Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, Clara Barton, Lady Rothschild, and other signatories of the Evangelina petitions wrote to express their joy and gratitude.
The Times
of London and the Baltimore
Sun,
among other papers, doffed their caps to Hearst, as did rafts of governors, senators, and congressmen. “Surely no feat of American journalism can compare with the enterprise and chivalry displayed by the
Journal
in this, its latest triumph,” declared Senator Stephen Elkins.
43
One of the most thoughtful contributions was wired from Washington by the head of the papal delegation, Monsignor Sebastian Martinelli. It managed to be gracious and yet skeptical of yellow journalism:
I was never so impressed with the wonderful resources of American journalism. It seems almost incredible that such an escape could have been accomplished so openly and with such apparent ease. Since my arrival in this country the gigantic activity of the press, the tremendous influence which it exercises on public life and the individual industry and personal study which are given in every line of its daily work, have filled me with amazement. I have sometimes been forced to regret that so much space was devoted to unworthy or futile efforts, but never could I refrain from admiring the skill with which all subjects are handled and the untiring efforts on the part of the journalists who accomplish the mission to which they are assigned.
44
The orgy of self-congratulation continued through the week as more telegrams and quotations were received from ever-higher offices. Secretary of State John Sherman commented that “every one will sympathize with the
Journal
’s enterprise in releasing Miss Cisneros. She is a woman.” President McKinley, in the presence of his cabinet and a
Journal
reporter, allowed that the Secretary had “correctly voiced the unofficial sentiment of the Administration.” The notes of chivalry struck by Secretary Sherman and Senator Elkins were often heard in discussions of the rescue. The
Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette
described Evangelina’s liberation as “a dashing chapter to modern knight errantry, and the suggestion of chivalry is not less so because the men who risked their lives to execute the daring exploit were employed by a newspaper for the purpose.”
45
Journal
’s enterprise in releasing Miss Cisneros. She is a woman.” President McKinley, in the presence of his cabinet and a
Journal
reporter, allowed that the Secretary had “correctly voiced the unofficial sentiment of the Administration.” The notes of chivalry struck by Secretary Sherman and Senator Elkins were often heard in discussions of the rescue. The
Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette
described Evangelina’s liberation as “a dashing chapter to modern knight errantry, and the suggestion of chivalry is not less so because the men who risked their lives to execute the daring exploit were employed by a newspaper for the purpose.”
45
The jailbreak raised some vexing diplomatic questions. The British papers addressed them first, wondering if Evangelina was extraditable and, if so, if Spain would bother with a request. A lawyer for the Spanish legation in Washington argued that the United States would be honor bound to comply with a Spanish demand for the girl’s return. New York legal eminence Elihu Root ventured that because Evangelina had been seized by individuals acting in their individual capacity on Spanish soil, the United States bore no responsibility for the escape and was unaffected in its friendly relations with Madrid. The
Journal,
for its part, was spoiling for a custody battle. It declared itself pleased with the “rank illegality” of its actions: “When right and wrong are turned upside down, when devilish ferocity and bestial lust are intrenched in power and innocence is under the ban of outlawry, there is a savage satisfaction in striking a smashing blow at a legal system that has become an organized crime.” The paper acknowledged that its sentiments might be out of tune with a prosaic and commercial century, and it expected lectures on how “the age of knight errantry” was past. To that it answered, “if innocent maidens are still imprisoned by tyrants, the knight errant is yet needed. The
Journal
is boundlessly glad that it has rescued Evangelina Cisneros. . . . The
Journal
is ready to stand all the consequences of what it has done. The main thing is that the wronged and suffering girl is out of the Casa Recojidas, out of Cuba, out of Weyler’s grasp, and safe under the Stars and Stripes.”
46
Journal,
for its part, was spoiling for a custody battle. It declared itself pleased with the “rank illegality” of its actions: “When right and wrong are turned upside down, when devilish ferocity and bestial lust are intrenched in power and innocence is under the ban of outlawry, there is a savage satisfaction in striking a smashing blow at a legal system that has become an organized crime.” The paper acknowledged that its sentiments might be out of tune with a prosaic and commercial century, and it expected lectures on how “the age of knight errantry” was past. To that it answered, “if innocent maidens are still imprisoned by tyrants, the knight errant is yet needed. The
Journal
is boundlessly glad that it has rescued Evangelina Cisneros. . . . The
Journal
is ready to stand all the consequences of what it has done. The main thing is that the wronged and suffering girl is out of the Casa Recojidas, out of Cuba, out of Weyler’s grasp, and safe under the Stars and Stripes.”
46
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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