“I had no opportunity to count the prisoners, but I learned that there were about 180 on the average confined there.  I learned as definitely as I could, without seeing the contract, that a certain party had the contract to feed these prisoners at twenty-five cents each per day.  Thus he gets $45 a day, and I learned that the food costs him only $7 to $8 a day, and, as some of the prisoners did the cooking, his profit can be readily seen.  On such a contract he could afford to divide with the judge and army officers to keep the prison full.”

A minister of the gospel in morro castle.

The Southern Baptist Missionary Society has a mission in the city of Havana, and it was formerly in charge of Rev. Alberto J. Diaz, whose home is in the United States.  Ever loyal to his flag, and believing in the institutions of his country, he lost no opportunity to preach civil as well as religious liberty, and though often warned to desist, by the Spanish authorities, he continued the course which he regarded as his solemn duty.  He gives particulars of his arrest as follows: 

“About three o’clock one morning I was aroused by a knock at the door of my house, and when I opened it I saw some fifty or sixty Spanish soldiers, with their guns leveled at me.  I quickly shut the door and talked through it.  The captain said he must search the house, and I consented to let three men come in.  They spent seven hours looking through two trunks full of sermons, and other papers, and when the search was completed they had found no incriminating documents.”

Nevertheless, both Dr. Diaz and his brother were imprisoned in Morro Castle.  They were tried for treasonable utterances and sentenced to death.  Fortunately one of the sentries of the prison was a member of Dr. Diaz’s church, and through his kind offices, a message was sent to the president of the Southern Baptist Missionary Society in Atlanta.  He communicated with the authorities at Washington.  This resulted in the execution being postponed, and the brothers were accorded more humane treatment than they had received heretofore.

Dr. Diaz now addressed a telegram to our Secretary of State, giving the particulars of the arrest, trial and conviction, and appealing to him to demand their immediate release.  The message was smuggled on board a boat bound for Key West, and Weyler, hearing of it, at once cabled to Washington that Diaz had been released.  He, with his brother and his family, was compelled to leave the island by the first steamer, and they returned to the United States.

In our treaty with Spain, which was in force up to the time of the declaration of war, was the following clause: 

“No citizen of the United States, residing in Spain, her adjacent islands, or her ultramarine possessions, charged with acts of sedition, treason, or conspiracy against the institutions, the public security, the integrity of the territory, or against the supreme government, or any other crime whatsoever, shall be subject to trial by any exceptionable tribunal, but exclusively by the ordinary jurisdiction, except in the case of being captured with arms in hand.”