General Molineux was at his office at the Devoe and Raynolds paint factory when the news reached him. He was still beaming with joy a half hour later when a flock of newsmen arrived to hear his reaction.
“Just what I expected, but thank God the strain is over,” said the General, offering cigars all around. “I tell you, boys, this has added years to my life.”
And what about the rumors, asked one reporter, that the district attorney might decide to forego another trial and simply set Roland free?
“That wouldn’t please me at all,” said General Molineux. “This thing has gone too far. To let him off would brand him for life with suspicion. I’d rather see my son pass through the ordeal of another trial than have him set free without a complete vindication.”
But what if he were to be convicted again? someone asked.
“Impossible,” snorted the General. “Why, even on the evidence that sent him to the death cell, he should have been acquitted.”
A short time later, he was on the train to Sing Sing. He arrived too late to see Roland, who received the happy news early the next morning from Warden Johnson.
Roland was awake and standing expectantly by the barred door of his cell when Johnson entered the Death House at 6:30 A.M., Wednesday, October 16. “Well, Roland, I have good news for you,” he said. “The Court of Appeals has granted you a new trial.”
For a moment, Roland made no reply, “as if he did not realize the full purport of the information.” Finally, he let out a laugh and said, “It seems too good to be true.” He then thanked Johnson for bringing him the news, while the inmates in the adjoining cells called out their congratulations.1
Just before noon the following day, word reached Warden Johnson that a police officer had left New York City with a requisition for Molineux. Preparations for the transfer were immediately begun. At 3:00 P.M., a rickety hack pulled up at the prison gate and discharged Detective Sergeant Robert McNaught, along with General Molineux and George Gordon Battle. The three were immediately ushered into the office of Keeper Connaughton.
A few minutes later, Roland—freshly shaved and wearing a new black serge suit and a pair of tan shoes in place of his prison slippers—was brought into the room. At the sight of his father, he broke into a broad grin, then threw himself into the old man’s arms. They embraced and kissed each other’s cheeks before stepping back and shaking hands.
“You don’t know how good it feels to get hold of you,” said Roland, eyes glistening.
“Your grip is as strong as ever, my boy,” said the General, clutching his son’s hand in both his own. “There’s many a good fight left in us yet. We’ll stick it out, all right, and the next time we take a journey together, it will be back home to Brooklyn.”2
A few minutes later, Roland, looking dapper in a black fedora and overcoat provided by the General, emerged from the gray walls of Sing Sing. Outside the gates, he climbed into the ramshackle coach with his father, lawyer, and Detective Sergeant McNaught. They had traveled only half the distance to the railway station when the rear springs gave way and the body of the coach came down with a crash between the wheels.
Roland was the first out and helped his father to crawl through the door, followed by McNaught and Battle. After ascertaining that no one was hurt, the foursome walked the rest of the way to the station, Roland cracking jokes about his bumpy return to the real world.3
The platform was packed with villagers when the party strolled up to the station. Roland and the others pushed their way through the gawkers to the waiting room. Inside, Roland was greeted by the stationmaster and other railroad officials, who shook his hand and congratulated him on his release. A few minutes later, the train—known as the “Croton local”—drew up and the party boarded one of the smoking cars. Settling into a forward seat, his father beside him and the two other men directly behind, Roland pushed open the window and let the autumn air wash over him all the way back to New York City.
After arriving at Grand Central station, the four men piled into a cab and drove straight to the Tombs. By nightfall, Roland Molineux was back in his former second-tier cell, which had been whitewashed and furnished with a new bed in preparation for his return.4
Two nights later, veterans of the 159th New York State Volunteers—about seventy-five of the grizzled old soldiers, all told—gathered at the Molineux home in Fort Greene Place for their annual reunion. It was the thirty-seventh anniversary, to the day, of the Battle of Cedar Creek, in which Edward Molineux and his brigade had acquitted themselves so heroically. Following the meal, General Horatio C. King, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, rose and delivered a speech in which he paid tribute to the “exceptional and brilliant part” General Molineux had played in that “desperate struggle”—a fight that had ended with the “complete rout” of the enemy forces.
“But we are here not to celebrate that victory alone,” King continued, while his listeners—lawyers, judges, congressmen, and other members of the social and political elite of Brooklyn—sat raptly at their tables. “The hearts of your comrades have warmed to you even more than they did in that mighty conflict because of the terrible battle for another’s life which you have so heroically made in the past two years or more. Out of the valley of the shadow of death, the boy who is dearer to you than your own life has emerged with another and fairer opportunity to establish his innocence. We, your comrades and friends, who love you and believe in the innocence of your son, are here to congratulate you most fervently, and to pray for an early and complete sweeping away of the dark clouds which have so long hung over your beloved house.”
An outburst of thunderous applause interrupted King at this point. He waited until the ovation subsided before bringing his address to a rousing close. “We renew to you the pledge of our friendship and our confidence. In sunshine and shadow, in weal or woe, we are your comrades now as we were when shot and shell made gruesome music in our ears; and the comradeship formed under such conditions can never weaken or fail.”5
Backing up their vows of support with direct and practical action, the General’s old comrades joined together in offering financial help to defray his enormous and ever-mounting legal expenses. “It is well known,” read a declaration issued by the veterans, “that by reason of unfortunate circumstances involving the good name of General Molineux and his family, great sacrifices have been made in order to maintain their reputation unsullied. To a younger man, the opportunity to recuperate financially might present itself, but at the age of nearly three score and ten, it would seem almost too late for the General to retrieve his fortune.”
The proud old warrior, however, would have none of it. Conveying his heartfelt thanks to his “boys,” he graciously declined the offer. He “was not, thank God, down to that necessity. I have said that I would spend my last dollar in the defense of my son,” he declared, “and I will. That last dollar has not yet been reached.”6
The General’s willingness to sacrifice his fortune on behalf of his son only enhanced his already lofty reputation among the public. Even his former enemies in the South rallied to his side. “I faced you in battle, but I congratulate you on the prospective release of your son,” one ex–Confederate officer wrote to him. “Your brave and generous heart deserves it. I believe in the vindication of your son.” He received sympathetic letters from other onetime foes, including a major from the Fifth Georgia Regiment, who denounced Assistant DA Osborne for insulting the General’s daughter-in-law and offered to horsewhip the scoundrel should he ever show his face down South.7
The General, of course, had always been an object of admiration, even reverence. The outpouring of sympathy for his cause in the wake of Roland’s release from Sing Sing, however, was something new. Even the yellow papers, which had tried and convicted Roland in their pages, had lost their taste for attacking the gallant old General’s son.
As one observer would put it, “the hostile tide against Roland had begun to ebb.”8