BY FRANK E. MORAN
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Colonel Thomas E. Rose
Among all the thrilling incidents in the history of Libby Prison, none
exceeds in interest the celebrated tunnel escape which occurred on the
night of February 9, 1864. I was one of the 109 Union officers who
passed through the tunnel, and one of the ill-fated 48 that were
retaken. I and two companions--Lieutenant Charles H. Morgan of the 21st
Wisconsin regiment, who has since served several terms in Congress from
Missouri, and Lieutenant William L. Watson of the same company and
regiment--when recaptured by the Confederate cavalry were in sight of
the Union picket posts. Strange as it may appear, no accurate and
complete account has ever been given to the public of this, the most
ingenious and daring escape made on either side during the civil war.
Twelve of the party of fifteen who dug the tunnel are still living,
including their leader.
Thomas E. Rose, colonel of the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteers, the
engineer and leader in the plot throughout,--now a captain in the 16th
United States Infantry,--was taken prisoner at the battle of
Chickamauga, September 20, 1863. On his way to Richmond he escaped from
his guards at Weldon, N.C., but, after a day's wandering about the pine
forests with a broken foot, was retaken by a detachment of Confederate
cavalry and sent to Libby Prison, Richmond, where he arrived October 1,
1863.
Libby Prison fronts on Carey street, Richmond, and stands upon a hill
which descends abruptly to the canal, from which its southern wall is
divided only by a street, and having a vacant lot on the east. The
building was wholly detached, making it a comparatively easy matter to
guard the prison securely with a small force and keep every door and
window in full view from without. As an additional measure of safety,
prisoners were not allowed on the ground-floor, except that in the
daytime they were permitted to use the first floor of the middle
section for a cook-room. The interior embraced nine large
warehouse-rooms 105 × 45, with eight feet from each floor to ceiling,
except the upper floor, which gave more room, owing to the pitch of the
gable roof. The abrupt slant of the hill gives the building an
additional story on the south side. The whole building really embraces
three sections, and these were originally separated by heavy blank
walls. The Confederates cut doors through the walls of the two upper
floors, which comprised the prisoners' quarters, and they were thus
permitted to mingle freely with each other; but there was no
communication whatever between the three large rooms on the first floor.
Beneath these floors were three cellars of the same dimensions as the
rooms above them, and, like them, divided from each other by massive
blank walls. For ready comprehension, let these be designated the east,
middle, and west cellars. Except in the lofts known as "Streight's room"
and "Milroy's room," which were occupied by the earliest inmates of
Libby in 1863, there was no furniture in the building, and only a few of
the early comers possessed such a luxury as an old army blanket or a
knife, cup, and tin plate. As a rule, the prisoner, by the time he
reached Libby, found himself devoid of earthly goods save the meager and
dust-begrimed summer garb in which he had made his unlucky campaign.
At night the six large lofts presented strange war-pictures, over which
a single tallow candle wept copious and greasy tears that ran down over
the petrified loaf of corn-broad, Borden's condensed-milk can, or
bottle in which it was set. The candle flickered on until "taps," when
the guards, with unconscious irony shouted, "Lights out!"--at which
signal it usually disappeared amid a shower of boots and such other
missiles as were at hand. The sleepers covered the six floors, lying in
ranks, head to head and foot to foot, like prostrate lines of battle.
For the general good, and to preserve something like military precision,
these ranks (especially when cold weather compelled them to lie close
for better warmth) were subdivided into convenient squads under charge
of a "captain," who was invested with authority to see that every man
lay "spoon fashion."
No consideration of personal convenience was permitted to interfere with
the general comfort of the "squad." Thus, when the hard floor could no
longer be endured on the right side,--especially by the thin men,--the
captain gave the command, "Attention, Squad Number Four! Prepare to
spoon! One--two--spoon!" And the whole squad flopped over on the left
side.
The first floor on the west of the building was used by the Confederates
as an office and for sleeping-quarters for the prison officials, and a
stairway guarded by sentinels led from this to Milroy's room just above
it. As before explained, the middle room was shut off from the office by
a heavy blank wall. This room, known as the "kitchen," had two stoves in
it, one of which stood about ten feet from the heavy door that opened on
Carey street sidewalk, and behind the door was a fireplace. The room
contained also several long pine tables with permanent seats attached,
such as may be commonly seen at picnic grounds. The floor was constantly
inundated here by several defective and overworked water-faucets and a
leaky trough.
A stairway without banisters led up on the southwest end of the floor,
above which was a room known as the "Chickamauga room," being chiefly
occupied by Chickamauga prisoners. The sentinel who had formerly been
placed at this stairway at night, to prevent the prisoners from entering
the kitchen, had been withdrawn when, in the fall of 1863, the horrible
condition of the floor made it untenable for sleeping purposes.
The uses to which the large ground-floor room east of the kitchen was
put varied during the first two years of the war; but early in October
of 1863, and thereafter, it was permanently used and known as the
hospital, and it contained a large number of cots, which were never
unoccupied. An apartment had been made at the north or front of the
room, which served as a doctor's office and laboratory. Like those
adjoining it on the west, this room had a large door opening on Carey
street, which was heavily bolted and guarded on the outside.
The arrival of the Chickamauga prisoners greatly crowded the upper
floors, and compelled the Confederates to board up a small portion of
the east cellar at its southeast corner as an additional cook-room,
several large caldrons having been set in a rudely built furnace; so,
for a short period, the prisoners were allowed down there in the daytime
to cook. A stairway led from this cellar to the room above, which
subsequently became the hospital.
Such, in brief, was the condition of things when Colonel Rose arrived at
the prison. From the hour of his coming, a means of escape became his
constant and eager study; and, with this purpose in view, he made a
careful and minute survey of the entire premises.
From the windows of the upper east or "Gettysburg room" he could look
across the vacant lot on the east and get a glimpse of the yard between,
two adjacent buildings which faced the canal and Carey street
respectively, and he estimated the intervening space at about seventy
feet. From the south windows he looked out across a street upon the
canal and James River, running parallel with each other, the two streams
at this point being separated by a low and narrow strip of land. This
strip periodically disappeared when protracted seasons of heavy rain
came, or when spring floods so rapidly swelled the river that the latter
invaded the cellars of Libby. At such times it was common to see
enormous swarms of rats come out from the lower doors and windows of the
prison and make head for dry land in swimming platoons amid the cheers
of the prisoners in the upper windows. On one or two occasions Rose
observed workmen descending from the middle of the south-side street
into a sewer running through its center, and concluded that this sewer
must have various openings to the canal both to the east and west of the
prison.
The north portion of the cellar contained a large quantity of loose
packing-straw, covering the floor to an average depth of two feet; and
this straw afforded shelter, especially at night, for a large colony of
rats, which gave the place the name of "Rat Hell."
In one afternoon's inspection of this dark end, Rose suddenly
encountered a fellow-prisoner, Major A.G. Hamilton, of the 12th Kentucky
Cavalry. A confiding friendship followed, and the two men entered at
once upon the plan of gaining their liberty. They agreed that the most
feasible scheme was a tunnel, to begin in the rear of the little
kitchen-apartment at the southeast corner of Rat Hell. Without more ado
they secured a broken shovel and two case-knives and began operations.
Within a few days the Confederates decided upon certain changes in the
prison for the greater security of their captives. A week afterward the
cook-room was abandoned, the stairway nailed up, the prisoners sent to
the upper floors, and all communication with the east cellar was cut
off. This was a sore misfortune, for this apartment was the only
possible base of successful tunnel operations. Colonel Rose now began to
study other practicable means of escape, and spent night after night
examining the posts and watching the movements of the sentinels on the
four sides of Libby. One very dark night, during a howling storm, Rose
again, unexpectedly met Hamilton in a place where no prisoner could
reasonably be looked for at such an hour. For an instant the
impenetrable darkness made it impossible for either to determine whether
he had met a friend or foe: neither had a weapon, yet each involuntarily
felt for one, and each made ready to spring at the other's throat, when
a flash of lightning revealed their identity. The two men had availed
themselves of the darkness of the night and the roar of the storm to
attempt an escape from a window of the upper west room to a platform
that ran along the west outer wall of the prison, from which they hoped
to reach the ground and elude the sentinels, whom they conjectured would
be crouched in the shelter of some doorway or other partial refuge that
might be available; but so vivid and frequent were the lightning flashes
that the attempt was seen to be extremely hazardous.
Rose now spoke of the entrance from the south-side street to the middle
cellar, having frequently noticed the entrance and exit of workmen at
that point, and expressed his belief that if an entrance could be
effected to this cellar it would afford them the only chance of slipping
past the sentinels.
He hunted up a bit of pine-wood which he whittled into a sort of wedge,
and the two men went down into the dark, vacant kitchen directly over
this cellar. With the wedge Rose pried a floor-board out of its place,
and made an opening large enough to let himself through. He had never
been in this middle cellar, and was wholly ignorant of its contents or
whether it was occupied by Confederates or workmen; but as he had made
no noise, and the place was in profound darkness, he decided to go down
and reconnoiter.
He wrenched off one of the long boards that formed a table-seat in the
kitchen, and found that it was long enough to touch the cellar base and
protrude a foot or so above the kitchen floor. By this means he easily
descended, leaving Hamilton to keep watch above.
The storm still raged fiercely, and the faint beams of a street-lamp
revealed the muffled form of the sentinel slowly pacing his beat and
carrying his musket at "secure" arms. Creeping softly toward him along
the cellar wall, he now saw that what he had supposed was a door was
simply a naked opening to the street; and further inspection disclosed
the fact that there was but one sentinel on the south side of the
prison. Standing in the dark shadow, he could easily have touched this
man with his hand as he repeatedly passed him. Groping about, he found
various appurtenances indicating that the south end of this cellar was
used for a carpenter's shop, and that the north end was partitioned off
into a series of small cells with padlocked doors, and that through each
door a square hole, a foot in diameter, was cut. Subsequently it was
learned that these dismal cages were alternately used for the
confinement of "troublesome prisoners"--_i.e._, those who had
distinguished themselves by ingenious attempts to escape--and also for
runaway slaves, and Union spies under sentence of death.
At the date of Rose's first reconnaissance to this cellar, these cells
were vacant and unguarded. The night was far spent, and Rose proceeded
to return to the kitchen, where Hamilton was patiently waiting for him.
The very next day a rare good fortune befell Rose. By an agreement
between the commissioners of exchange, several bales of clothing and
blankets had been sent by our government to the famishing Union
prisoners on Belle Isle, a number of whom had already frozen to death. A
committee of Union officers then confined in Libby, consisting of
General Neal Dow, Colonel Alexander von Shrader, Lieut.-Colonel Joseph
F. Boyd, and Colonel Harry White, having been selected by the
Confederates to supervise the distribution of the donation, Colonel
White had, by a shrewd bit of finesse, "confiscated" a fine rope by
which one of the bales was tied, and this he now presented to Colonel
Rose. It was nearly a hundred feet long, an inch thick, and almost new.
It was hardly dark the following night before Rose and Hamilton were
again in the kitchen, and as soon as all was quiet Rose fastened his
rope to one of the supporting posts, took up the floor-plank as before,
and both men descended to the middle cellar. They were not a little
disappointed to discover that where there had been but one sentinel on
the south side there were now two. On this and for several nights they
contented themselves with sly visits of observation to this cellar,
during which Rose found and secreted various tools, among which were a
broad-ax, a saw, two chisels, several files, and a carpenter's square.
One dark night both men went down and determined to try their luck at
passing the guards. Rose made the attempt and succeeded in passing the
first man, but unluckily was seen by the second. The latter called
lustily for the corporal of the guard, and the first excitedly cocked
his gun and peered into the dark door through which Rose swiftly
retreated. The guard called, "Who goes there?" but did not enter the
dark cellar. Rose and Hamilton mounted the rope and had just succeeded
in replacing the plank when the corporal and a file of men entered the
cellar with a lantern. They looked into every barrel and under every
bench, but no sign of Yankees appeared; and as on this night it happened
that several workmen were sleeping in an apartment at the north end, the
corporal concluded that the man seen by the sentinel was one of these,
notwithstanding their denial when awakened and questioned. After a long
parley the Confederates withdrew, and Hamilton and Rose, depressed in
spirits, went to bed, Rose as usual concealing his rope.
Before the week was out they were at it again. On one of these nights
Rose suddenly came upon one of the workmen, and, swift as thought,
seized the hidden broad-ax with the intention of braining him if he
attempted an alarm; but the poor fellow was too much paralyzed to cry
out, and when finally he did recover his voice and his wits, it was to
beg Rose, "for God's sake," not to come in there again at night.
Evidently the man never mentioned the circumstance, for Rose's
subsequent visits, which were soon resumed, disclosed no evidence of a
discovery by the Confederates.
Hamilton agreed with Rose that there remained apparently but one means
of escape, and that was by force. To overpower the two sentinels on the
south side would have been an easy matter, but how to do it and not
alarm the rest of the guard, and, in consequence, the whole city, was
the problem. To secure these sentinels, without alarming their comrades
on the east, west, and north sides of the prison, would require the
swift action of several men of nerve acting in concert. Precious time
was passing, and possibly further alterations might be decided upon that
would shut them off from the middle cellar, as they had already been
from their original base of operations. Moreover, a new cause of anxiety
now appeared. It soon transpired that their nocturnal prowlings and
close conferences together had already aroused the belief among many
observant prisoners that a plan of escape was afoot, and both men were
soon eagerly plied with guarded inquiries, and besought by their
questioners to admit them to their confidence.
Hamilton and Rose now decided to organize an escaping party. A number of
men were then sworn to secrecy and obedience by Colonel Rose, who was
the only recognized leader in all operations that followed. This party
soon numbered seventy men. The band was then taken down by Rose in
convenient details to the middle cellar or carpenter's shop on many
nights, to familiarize each man with the place and with his special part
in the plot, and also to take advantage of any favoring circumstances
that might arise.
When all had by frequent visits become familiar with the rendezvous,
Rose and the whole party descended one night with the determination to
escape at whatever hazard. The men were assigned to their several
stations as usual, and a selected few were placed by the leader close to
the entrance, in front of which the sentinel was regularly passing. Rose
commanded strict silence, and placed himself near the exit preparatory
to giving the signal. It was an exciting moment, and the bravest heart
beat fast. A signal came, but not the one they looked for. At the very
moment of action, the man whom Rose had left at the floor-opening in the
kitchen gave the danger-signal! The alert leader had, with consummate
care, told every man beforehand that he must never be surprised by this
signal,--it was a thing to be counted upon,--and that noise and panic
were of all things to be avoided as fatal folly in their operations. As
a consequence, when this signal came, Rose quietly directed the men to
fall in line and reascend to the kitchen rapidly, but without noise,
which they did by the long rope which now formed the easy means of
communication from the kitchen to the cellar.
Rose remained below to cover the retreat, and when the last man got up
he followed him, replaced the board in the floor, and concealed the
rope. He had barely done so when a detail of Confederate guards entered
the kitchen from the Carey street door, and, headed by an officer,
marched straight in his direction. Meantime the party had disappeared up
the stairway and swiftly made their way over their prostrate comrades'
forms to their proper sleeping-places. Rose, being the last up, and
having the floor to fix, had now no time to disappear like his
companions, at least without suspicious haste. He accordingly took a
seat at one of the tables, and, putting an old pipe in his mouth, coolly
awaited the approach of the Confederates. The officer of the guard came
along, swinging his lantern almost in his face, stared at him for a
second, and without a remark or a halt marched past him and ascended
with his escort to the Chickamauga room. The entrance of a guard and
their march around the prison, although afterward common enough after
taps, was then an unusual thing, causing much talk among the prisoners,
and to the mind of Rose and his fellow-plotters was indicative of
aroused suspicion on the part of the Confederates.
The whispering groups of men next day, and the number of his eager
questioners, gave the leader considerable concern; and Hamilton
suggested, as a measure of safety rather than choice, that some of the
mischievous talk of escape would be suppressed by increasing the party.
This was acted upon; the men, like the rest, were put under oath by
Rose, and the party was thus increased to four hundred and twenty. This
force would have been enough to overpower the prison guard in a few
minutes, but the swift alarm certain to ensue in the streets and spread
like wild-fire over Richmond, the meager information possessed by the
prisoners as to the strength and position of the nearest Federal
troops, the strongly guarded labyrinth of breastworks that encircled the
city, and the easy facilities for instant pursuit at the command of the
Confederates, put the success of such an undertaking clearly out of the
range of probability, unless, indeed, some unusual favoring contingency
should arise, such as the near approach of a coöperating column of
Federal cavalry.
Nor was this an idle dream, as the country now knows, for even at this
period General Kilpatrick was maturing his plans for that bold
expedition for the rescue of the prisoners at Richmond and Belle Isle in
which the lamented and heroic young cripple, Colonel Ulric Dahlgren,
lost his life. Rose saw that a break out of Libby without such outside
assistance promised nothing but a fruitless sacrifice of life and the
savage punishment of the survivors. Hence the project, although eagerly
and exhaustively discussed, was prudently abandoned.
All talk of escape by the general crowd now wholly ceased, and the
captives resigned themselves to their fate and waited with depressed
spirits for the remote contingency of an exchange. The quiet thus gained
was Rose's opportunity. He sought Hamilton and told him that they must
by some stratagem regain access to Rat Hell, and that the tunnel project
must be at once revived. The latter assented to the proposition, and the
two began earnestly to study the means of gaining an entrance without
discovery into this coveted base of operations.
They could not even get into the room above the cellar they wanted to
reach, for that was the hospital, and the kitchen's heavy wall shut
them off therefrom. Neither could they break the heavy wall that divided
this cellar from the carpenter's shop, which had been the nightly
rendezvous of the party while the breakout was under consideration, for
the breach certainly would be discovered by the workmen or Confederates,
some of whom were in there constantly during daylight.
There was, in fact, but one plan by which Rat Hell could be reached
without detection, and the conception of this device and its successful
execution were due to the stout-hearted Hamilton. This was to cut a hole
in the back of the kitchen fireplace; the incision must be just far
enough to preserve the opposite or hospital side intact. It must then be
cut downward to a point below the level of the hospital floor, then
eastward into Rat Hell, the completed opening thus to describe the
letter "S." It must be wide enough to let a man through, yet the wall
must not be broken on the hospital side above the floor, nor marred on
the carpenter's-shop side below it. Such a break would be fatal, for
both of these points were conspicuously exposed to the view of the
Confederates every hour in the day. Moreover, it was imperatively
necessary that all trace of the beginning of the opening should be
concealed, not only from the Confederate officials and guards, who were
constantly passing the spot every day, but from the hundreds of
uninitiated prisoners who crowded around the stove just in front of it
from dawn till dark.
Work could be possible only between the hours of ten at night, when the
room was generally abandoned by the prisoners because of its inundated
condition, and four o'clock in the morning, when the earliest risers
were again astir. It was necessary to do the work with an old jack-knife
and one of the chisels previously secured by Rose. It must be done in
darkness and without noise, for a vigilant sentinel paced on the Carey
street sidewalk just outside the door and within ten feet of the
fireplace. A rubber blanket was procured, and the soot from the chimney
carefully swept into it. Hamilton, with his old knife, cut the mortar
between the bricks and pried a dozen of them out, being careful to
preserve them whole.
The rest of the incision was made in accordance with the design
described, but no conception could have been formed beforehand of the
sickening tediousness of cutting an S-shaped hole through a heavy wall
with a feeble old jack-knife, in stolen hours of darkness. Rose guarded
his comrade against the constant danger of interruption by alert enemies
on one side and by blundering friends on the other; and, as frequently
happens in human affairs, their friends gave them more trouble than
their foes. Night after night passed, and still the two men got up after
taps from their hard beds, and descended to the dismal and reeking
kitchen to bore for liberty. When the sentinel's call at Castle Thunder
and at Libby announced four o'clock, the dislodged bricks were carefully
replaced, and the soot previously gathered in the gum blanket was flung
in handfuls against the restored wall, filling the seams between the
bricks so thoroughly as to defy detection. At last, after many weary
nights, Hamilton's heroic patience and skill were rewarded, and the way
was open to the coveted base of operations, Rat Hell.
Now occurred a circumstance that almost revealed the plot and nearly
ended in a tragedy. When the opening was finished, the long rope was
made fast to one of the kitchen supporting posts, and Rose proceeded to
descend and reconnoiter. He got partly through with ease, but lost his
hold in such a manner that his body slipped through so as to pinion his
arms and leave him wholly powerless either to drop lower or return--the
bend of the hole being such as to cramp his back and neck terribly and
prevent him from breathing. He strove desperately, but each effort only
wedged him more firmly in the awful vise. Hamilton sprang to his aid and
did his utmost to effect his release; but, powerful as he was, he could
not budge him. Rose was gasping for breath and rapidly getting fainter,
but even in this fearful strait he refrained from an outcry that would
certainly alarm the guards just outside the door. Hamilton saw that
without speedy relief his comrade must soon smother. He dashed through
the long, dark room up the stairway, over the forms of several hundred
men, and disregarding consequences and savage curses in the dark and
crowded room, he trampled upon arms, legs, faces, and stomachs, leaving
riot and blasphemy in his track among the rudely awakened and now
furious lodgers of the Chickamauga room. He sought the sleeping-place of
Major George H. Fitzsimmons, but he was missing. He, however, found
Lieutenant F.F. Bennett, of the 18th Regulars (since a major in the 9th
United States Cavalry), to whom he told the trouble in a few hasty
words. Both men fairly flew across the room, dashed down the stairs,
and by their united efforts Rose, half dead and quite speechless, was
drawn up from the fearful trap.
Hamilton managed slightly to increase the size of the hole and provide
against a repetition of the accident just narrated, and all being now
ready, the two men entered eagerly upon the work before them. They
appropriated one of the wooden spittoons of the prison, and to each side
attached a piece of clothes-line which they had been permitted to have
to dry clothes on. Several bits of candle and the larger of the two
chisels were also taken to the operating-cellar. They kept this secret
well, and worked alone for many nights. In fact, they would have so
continued, but they found that after digging about four feet their
candle would go out in the vitiated air. Rose did the digging, and
Hamilton fanned air into him with his hat: even then he had to emerge
into the cellar every few minutes to breathe. Rose could dig, but needed
the light and air; and Hamilton could not fan, and drag out and deposit
the excavated earth, and meantime keep a lookout. In fact, it was
demonstrated that there was slim chance of succeeding without more
assistance, and it was decided to organize a party large enough for
effective work by reliefs. As a preliminary step, and to afford the
means of more rapid communication with the cellar from the fireplace
opening, the long rope obtained from Colonel White was formed by
Hamilton into a rope-ladder with convenient wooden rungs. This
alteration considerably increased its bulk, and added to Rose's
difficulty in concealing it from curious eyes.
He now made a careful selection of thirteen men besides himself and
Hamilton, and bound them by a solemn oath to secrecy and strict
obedience. To form this party as he wanted it required some diplomacy,
as it was known that the Confederates had on more than one occasion sent
cunning spies into Libby disguised as Union prisoners, for the detection
of any contemplated plan of escape. Unfortunately, the complete list of
the names of the party now formed has not been preserved; but among the
party, besides Rose and Hamilton, were Captain John Sterling, 30th
Indiana; Captain John Lucas, 5th Kentucky Cavalry; Captain Isaac N.
Johnson, 6th Kentucky Cavalry; and Lieutenant F.F. Bennett, 18th
Regulars.
The party, being now formed, were taken to Rat Hell and their several
duties explained to them by Rose, who was invested with full authority
over the work in hand. Work was begun in rear of the little kitchen-room
previously abandoned at the southeast corner of the cellar. To
systematize the labor, the party was divided into squads of five each,
which gave the men one night on duty and two off, Rose assigning each
man to the branch of work in which experiments proved him the most
proficient. He was himself, by long odds, the best digger of the party;
while Hamilton had no equal for ingenious mechanical skill in contriving
helpful, little devices to overcome or lessen the difficulties that
beset almost every step of the party's progress.
The first plan was to dig down alongside the east wall and under it
until it was passed, then turn southward and make for the large street
sewer next the canal and into which Rose had before noticed workmen
descending. This sewer was a large one, believed to be fully six feet
high, and, if it could be gained, there could be little doubt that an
adjacent opening to the canal would be found to the eastward. It was
very soon revealed, however, that the lower side of Libby was built upon
ponderous timbers, below which they could not hope to penetrate with
their meager stock of tools--such, at least, was the opinion of nearly
all the party. Rose nevertheless determined that the effort should be
made, and they were soon at work with old penknives and case-knives
hacked into saws. After infinite labor they at length cut through the
great logs, only to be met by an unforeseen and still more formidable
barrier. Their tunnel, in fact, had penetrated below the level of the
canal. Water began to filter in--feebly at first, but at last it broke
in with a rush that came near drowning Rose, who barely had time to make
his escape. This opening was therefore plugged up; and to do this
rapidly and leave no dangerous traces put the party to their wit's end.
An attempt was next made to dig into a small sewer that ran from the
southeast corner of the prison into the main sewer. After a number of
nights of hard labor, this opening was extended to a point below a brick
furnace in which were incased several caldrons. The weight of this
furnace caused a cave-in near the sentinel's path outside the prison
wall. Next day, a group of officers were seen eying the break curiously.
Rose, listening at a window above, heard the words "rats" repeated by
them several times, and took comfort. The next day he entered the cellar
alone, feeling that if the suspicions of the Confederates were really
awakened a trap would be set for him in Rat Hell, and determined, if
such were really the case, that he would be the only victim caught. He
therefore entered the little partitioned corner room with some anxiety,
but there was no visible evidence of a visit by the guards, and his
spirits again rose.
The party now reassembled, and an effort was made to get into the small
sewer that ran from the cook-room to the big sewer which Rose was so
eager to reach; but soon it was discovered, to the utter dismay of the
weary party, that this wood-lined sewer was too small to let a man
through it. Still it was hoped by Rose that by removing the plank with
which it was lined the passage could be made. The spirits of the party
were by this time considerably dashed by their repeated failures and
sickening work; but the undaunted Rose, aided by Hamilton, persuaded the
men to another effort, and soon the knives and toy saws were at work
again with vigor. The work went on so swimmingly that it was confidently
believed that an entrance to the main sewer would be gained on the night
of January 26, 1864.
On the night of the 25th two men had been left down in Rat Hell to cover
any remaining traces of a tunnel, and when night came again it was
expected that all would be ready for the escape between eight and nine
o'clock. In the mean time, the two men were to enter and make careful
examination of the main sewer and its adjacent outlets. The party, which
was now in readiness for its march to the Federal camps, waited tidings
from these two men all next day in tormenting anxiety, and the weary
hours went by on leaden wings. At last the sickening word came that the
planks yet to be removed before they could enter the main sewer were of
seasoned oak--hard as bone, and three inches thick. Their feeble tools
were now worn out or broken; they could no longer get air to work, or
keep a light in the horrible pit, which was reeking with cold mud; in
short, any attempt at further progress with the utensils at hand was
foolish.
Most of the party were now really ill from the foul stench in which they
had lived so long. The visions of liberty that had first lured them to
desperate efforts under the inspiration of Rose and Hamilton had at last
faded, and one by one they lost heart and hope, and frankly told Colonel
Rose that they could do no more. The party was therefore disbanded, and
the yet sanguine leader, with Hamilton for his sole helper, continued
the work alone. Up to this time thirty-nine nights had been spent in the
work of excavation. The two men now made a careful examination of the
northeast corner of the cellar, at which point the earth's surface
outside the prison wall, being eight or nine feet higher than at the
canal or south side, afforded a better place to dig than the latter,
being free from water and with clay-top enough to support itself. The
unfavorable feature of this point was that the only possible terminus of
a tunnel was a yard between the buildings beyond the vacant lot on the
east of Libby. Another objection was that, even when the tunnel should
be made to that point, the exit of any escaping party must be made
through an arched wagon-way under the building that faced the street on
the canal side, and every man must emerge on the sidewalk in sight of
the sentinel on the south side of the prison, the intervening space
being in the full glare of the gas-lamp. It was carefully noted, however
by Rose, long before this, that the west end of the beat of the nearest
sentinel was between fifty and sixty feet from the point of egress, and
it was concluded that by walking away at the moment the sentinel
commenced his pace westward, one would be far enough into the shadow to
make it improbable that the color of his clothing could be made out by
the sentinel when he faced about to return toward the eastern end of his
beat, which terminated ten to fifteen feet east of the prison wall. It
was further considered that as these sentinels had for their special
duty the guarding of the prison, they would not be eager to burden
themselves with the duty of molesting persons seen in the vicinity
outside of their jurisdiction, provided, of course, that the retreating
forms--many of which they must certainly see--were not recognized as
Yankees. All others they might properly leave for the challenge and
usual examination of the provost guard who patrolled the streets of
Richmond.
The wall of that east cellar had to be broken in three places before a
place was found where the earth was firm enough to support a tunnel. The
two men worked on with stubborn patience, but their progress was
painfully slow. Rose dug assiduously, and Hamilton alternately fanned
air to his comrade and dragged out and hid the excavated dirt, but the
old difficulty confronted him. The candle would not burn, the air could
not be fanned fast enough with a hat, and the dirt hidden, without
better contrivances or additional help.
Rose now reassembled the party, and selected from them a number who were
willing to renew the attempt.[12] Against the east wall stood a series
of stone fenders abutting inward, and these, being at uniform intervals
of about twenty feet, cast deep shadows that fell toward the prison
front. In one of these dark recesses the wall was pierced, well up
toward the Carey street end. The earth here has very densely compressed
sand, that offered a strong resistance to the broad-bladed chisel, which
was their only effective implement, and it was clear that a long turn of
hard work must be done to penetrate under the fifty-foot lot to the
objective point. The lower part of the tunnel was about six inches above
the level of the cellar floor, and its top about two and a half feet.
Absolute accuracy was of course impossible, either in giving the hole a
perfectly horizontal direction or in preserving uniform dimensions; but
a fair level was preserved, and the average diameter of the tunnel was a
little over two feet. Usually one man would dig, and fill the spittoon
with earth; upon the signal of a gentle pull, an assistant would drag
the load into the cellar by the clothes-lines fastened to each side of
this box and then hide it under the straw; a third constantly fanned air
into the tunnel with a rubber blanket stretched across a frame, the
invention of the ingenious Hamilton; a fourth would give occasional
relief to the last two; while a fifth would keep a lookout.
[Footnote 12: The party now consisted of Colonel Thomas E. Rose, 77th
Pennsylvania; Major A.G. Hamilton, 12th Kentucky; Captain Terrance
Clark, 79th Illinois; Major George H. Fitzsimmons, 30th Indiana; Captain
John F. Gallagher, 2d Ohio: Captain W.S.B. Randall, 2d Ohio; Captain
John Lucas, 5th Kentucky; Captain I.N. Johnson, 6th Kentucky; Major B.B.
McDonald, 101st Ohio; Lieutenant N.S. McKean, 21st Illinois; Lieutenant
David Garbett, 77th Pennsylvania; Lieutenant J.C. Fislar, 7th Indiana
Artillery; Lieutenant John D. Simpson, 10th Indiana; Lieutenant John
Mitchell, 79th Illinois; and Lieutenant Eli Foster, 30th Indiana. This
party was divided into three reliefs, as before, and the work of
breaking the cellar wall was successfully done the first night by
McDonald and Clark.]
The danger of discovery was continual, for the guards were under
instructions from the prison commandant to make occasional visits to
every accessible part of the building; so that it was not unusual for a
sergeant and several men to enter the south door of Rat Hell in the
daytime, while the diggers were at labor in the dark north end. During
these visits the digger would watch the intruders with his head sticking
out of the tunnel, while the others would crouch behind the low stone
fenders, or crawl quickly under the straw. This was, however, so
uninviting a place that the Confederates made this visit as brief as a
nominal compliance with their orders permitted, and they did not often
venture into the dark north end. The work was fearfully monotonous, and
the more so because absolute silence was commanded, the men moving about
mutely in the dark. The darkness caused them frequently to become
bewildered and lost; and as Rose could not call out for them, he had
often to hunt all over the big dungeon to gather them up and pilot them
to their places.
The difficulty of forcing air to the digger, whose body nearly filled
the tunnel, increased as the hole was extended, and compelled the
operator to back often into the cellar for air, and for air that was
itself foul enough to sicken a strong man.
But they were no longer harassed with the water and timbers that had
impeded their progress at the south end. Moreover, experience was daily
making each man more proficient in the work. Rose urged them on with
cheery enthusiasm, and their hopes rose high, for already they had
penetrated beyond the sentinel's beat and were nearing the goal.
The party off duty kept a cautious lookout from the upper east windows
for any indications of suspicion on the part of the Confederates. In
this extreme caution was necessary, both to avert the curiosity of
prisoners in those east rooms, and to keep out of the range of bullets
from the guards, who were under a standing order to fire at a head if
seen at a window, or at a hand if placed on the bars that secured them.
A sentinel's bullet one day cut a hole in the ear of Lieutenant Hammond;
another officer was wounded in the face by a bullet, which fortunately
first splintered against one of the window-bars; and a captain of an
Ohio regiment was shot through the head and instantly killed while
reading a newspaper. He was violating no rule whatever, and when shot
was from eight to ten feet inside the window through which the bullet
came. This was a wholly unprovoked and wanton murder; the cowardly
miscreant had fired the shot while he was off duty, and from the north
sidewalk of Carey street. The guards (home guards they were) used, in
fact, to gun for prisoners' heads from their posts below, pretty much
after the fashion of boys after squirrels; and the whizz of a bullet
through the windows became too common an occurrence to occasion remark
unless some one was shot.
Under a standing rule, the twelve hundred prisoners were counted twice
each day, the first count being made about nine in the morning, and the
last about four in the afternoon. This duty was habitually done by the
clerk of the prison, E.W. Ross, a civilian employed by the commandant.
He was christened "Little Ross"[13] by the prisoners, because of his
diminutive size. Ross was generally attended by either "Dick" Turner,
Adjutant Latouche, or Sergeant George Stansil, of the 18th Georgia, with
a small guard to keep the prisoners in four closed ranks during the
count. The commandant of the prison, Major Thomas P. Turner (no relative
of Dick's), seldom came up-stairs.
[Footnote 13: "Little Ross" was burned to death, with other guests, at
the Spotswood House, Richmond, in 1873.]
To conceal the absence of the five men who were daily at work at the
tunnel, their comrades of the party off digging duty resorted, under
Rose's supervision, to a device of "repeating." This scheme, which was
of vital importance to hoodwink the Confederates and avert mischievous
curiosity among the uninformed prisoners, was a hazardous business that
severely taxed the ingenuity and strained the nerve of the leader and
his coadjutors. The manner of the fraud varied with circumstances, but
in general it was worked by five of Rose's men, after being counted at
or near the head of the line, stooping down and running toward the foot
of the ranks, where a few moments later they were counted a second time,
thus making Ross's book balance. The whole five, however, could not
always do this undiscovered, and perhaps but three of the number could
repeat. These occasional mishaps threatened to dethrone the reason of
the puzzled clerk; but in the next count the "repeaters" would succeed
in their game, and for the time all went well, until one day some of the
prisoners took it into their heads, "just for the fun of the thing," to
imitate the repeaters. Unconscious of the curses that the party were
mentally hurling at them, the meddlers' sole purpose was to make "Little
Ross" mad. In this they certainly met with signal success, for the
reason of the mystified clerk seemed to totter as he repeated the count
over and over in the hope of finding out how one careful count would
show that three prisoners were missing and the next an excess of
fifteen. Finally Ross, lashed into uncontrollable fury by the sarcastic
remarks of his employers and the heartless merriment of the grinning
Yanks before him, poured forth his goaded soul as follows:
"Now, gentlemen, look yere. I can count a hundred as good as any blank
man in this yere town, but I'll be blank blanked if I can count a
hundred of you blanked Yankees. Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho:
there's eight or ten of you-uns yere that ain't yere!"
This extraordinary accusation "brought down the house," and the
Confederate officers and guards, and finally Ross himself, were caught
by the resistless contagion of laughter that shook the rafters of Libby.
The officials somehow found a balance that day on the books, and the
danger was for this once over, to the infinite relief of Rose and his
anxious comrades. But the Confederates appeared dissatisfied with
something, and came up-stairs next morning with more officers and with
double the usual number of guards; and some of these were now stationed
about the room so as to make it next to impossible to work the repeating
device successfully. On this day, for some reason, there were but two
men in the cellar, and these were Major B.B. McDonald and Captain I.N.
Johnson.
The count began as usual, and despite the guard in rear, two of the
party attempted the repeating device by forcing their way through the
center of the ranks toward the left; but the "fun of the thing" had now
worn out with the unsuspecting meddlers, who resisted the passage of the
two men. This drew the attention of the Confederate officers, and the
repeaters were threatened with punishment. The result was inevitable:
the count showed two missing. It was carefully repeated, with the same
result. To the dismay of Rose and his little band, the prison register
was now brought up-stairs and a long, tedious roll-call by name was
endured, each man passing through a narrow door as his name was called,
and between a line of guards.
No stratagem that Rose could now invent could avert the discovery by the
Confederates that McDonald and Johnson had disappeared, and the mystery
of their departure would be almost certain to cause an inquiry and
investigation that would put their plot in peril and probably reveal it.
At last the "J's" were reached, and the name of I.N. Johnson was lustily
shouted and repeated, with no response. The roll-call proceeded until
the name of B.B. McDonald was reached. To the increasing amazement of
everybody but the conspirators, he also had vanished. A careful note was
taken of these two names by the Confederates, and a thousand tongues
were now busy with the names of the missing men and their singular
disappearance.
The conspirators were in a tight place, and must choose between two
things. One was for the men in the cellar to return that night and face
the Confederates with the most plausible explanation of their absence
that they could invent, and the other alternative was the revolting one
of remaining in their horrible abode until the completion of the tunnel.
When night came the fireplace was opened, and the unlucky pair were
informed of the situation of affairs and asked to choose between the
alternatives presented. McDonald decided to return and face the music;
but Johnson, doubtful if the Confederates would be hoodwinked by any
explanation, voted to remain where he was and wait for the finish of the
tunnel.
As was anticipated, McDonald's return awakened almost as much curiosity
among the inhabitants of Libby as his disappearance, and he was soon
called to account by the Confederates. He told them he had fallen asleep
in an out-of-the-way place in the upper west room, where the guards must
have overlooked him during the roll-call of the day before. McDonald was
not further molested. The garrulous busybodies, who were Rose's chief
dread, told the Confederate officials that they had certainly slept near
Johnson the night before the day he was missed. Lieutenant J.C. Fislar
(of the working party), who also slept next to Johnson, boldly declared
this a case of mistaken identity, and confidently expressed his belief
to both Confederates and Federals who gathered around him that Johnson
had escaped, and was by this time, no doubt, safe in the Union lines. To
this he added the positive statement that Johnson had not been in his
accustomed sleeping-place for a good many nights. The busybodies, who
had indeed told the truth, looked at the speaker in speechless
amazement, but reiterated their statements. Others of the conspirators,
however, took Fislar's bold cue and stoutly corroborated him.
Johnson, was, of course, nightly fed by his companions, and gave them
such assistance as he could at the work; but it soon became apparent
that a man could not long exist in such a pestilential atmosphere. No
tongue can tell how long were the days and nights the poor fellow passed
among the squealing rats,--enduring the sickening air, the deathly
chill, the horrible, interminable darkness. One day out of three was an
ordeal for the workers, who at least had a rest of two days afterward.
As a desperate measure of relief, it was arranged, with the utmost
caution, that late each night Johnson should come up-stairs, when all
was dark and the prison in slumber, and sleep among the prisoners until
just before the time for closing the fireplace opening, about four
o'clock each morning. As he spoke to no one and the room was dark, his
presence was never known, even to those who lay next to him; and indeed
he listened to many earnest conversations between his neighbors
regarding his wonderful disappearance.[14]
[Footnote 14: In a volume entitled "Four Months in Libby," Captain
Johnson has related his experience at this time, and his subsequent
escape.]
As a matter of course, the incidents above narrated made day-work on the
tunnel too hazardous to be indulged in, on account of the increased
difficulty of accounting for absentees; but the party continued the
night-work with unabated industry.
When the opening had been extended nearly across the lot, some of the
party believed they had entered under the yard which was the intended
terminus; and one night, when McDonald was the digger, so confident was
he that the desired distance had been made, that he turned his direction
upward, and soon broke through to the surface. A glance showed him his
nearly fatal blunder, against which, indeed, he had been earnestly
warned by Rose, who from the first had carefully estimated the
intervening distance between the east wall of Libby and the terminus. In
fact, McDonald saw that he had broken through in the open lot which was
all in full view of a sentinel who was dangerously close. Appalled by
what he had done, he retreated to the cellar and reported the disaster
to his companions. Believing that discovery was now certain, the party
sent one of their number up the rope to report to Rose, who was asleep.
The hour was about midnight when the leader learned of the mischief. He
quickly got up, went down cellar, entered the tunnel, and examined the
break. It was not so near the sentinel's path as McDonald's excited
report indicated, and fortunately the breach was at a point whence the
surface sloped downward toward the east. He took off his blouse and
stuffed it into the opening, pulling the dirt over it noiselessly, and
in a few minutes there was little surface evidence of the hole. He then
backed into the cellar in the usual crab fashion, and gave directions
for the required depression of the tunnel and vigorous resumption of
the work. The hole made in the roof of the tunnel was not much larger
than a rat-hole and could not be seen from the prison. But the next
night Rose shoved an old shoe out of the hole, and the day afterward he
looked down through the prison bars and saw the shoe lying where he had
placed it, and judged from its position that he had better incline the
direction of the tunnel slightly to the left.
Meantime Captain Johnson was dragging out a wretched existence in Rat
Hell, and for safety was obliged to confine himself by day to the dark
north end, for the Confederates often came into the place very suddenly
through the south entrance. When they ventured too close, Johnson would
get into a pit that he had dug under the straw as a hiding-hole both for
himself and the tunnelers' tools, and quickly cover himself with a huge
heap of short packing-straw. A score of times he came near being stepped
upon by the Confederates, and more than once the dust of the straw
compelled him to sneeze in their very presence.
On Saturday, February 6, a larger party than usual of the Confederates
came into the cellar, walked by the very mouth, of the tunnel, and
seemed to be making a critical survey of the entire place. They remained
an unusually long time and conversed in low tones; several of them even
kicked the loose straw about; and in fact everything seemed to indicate
to Johnson--who was the only one of the working party now in the
cellar--that the long-averted discovery had been made. That night he
reported matters fully to Rose at the fireplace opening.
The tunnel was now nearly completed, and when Rose conveyed Johnson's
message to the party it caused dismay. Even the stout-hearted Hamilton
was for once excited, and the leader whose unflinching fortitude had
thus far inspired his little band had his brave spirits dashed. But his
buoyant courage rose quickly to its high and natural level. He could not
longer doubt that the suspicions of the Confederates were aroused, but
he felt convinced that these suspicions had not as yet assumed such a
definite shape as most of his companions thought; still, he had abundant
reason to believe that the success of the tunnel absolutely demanded its
speedy completion, and he now firmly resolved that a desperate effort
should be made to that end. Remembering that the next day was Sunday,
and that it was not customary for the Confederates to visit the
operating-cellar on that day, he determined to make the most in his
power of the now precious time. He therefore caused all the party to
remain up-stairs, directing them to keep a close watch upon the
Confederates from all available points of observation, to avoid being
seen in whispering groups,--in short, to avoid all things calculated to
excite the curiosity of friends or the suspicion of enemies,--and to
await his return.
Taking McDonald with him, he went down through the fireplace before
daylight on Sunday morning, and, bidding Johnson to keep a vigilant
watch for intruders and McDonald to fan air into him, he entered the
tunnel and began the forlorn hope. From this time forward he never once
turned over the chisel to a relief.
All day long he worked with the tireless patience of a beaver. When
night came, even his single helper, who performed the double duty of
fanning air and hiding the excavated earth, was ill from his hard, long
task and the deadly air of the cellar. Yet this was as nothing compared
with the fatigue of the duty that Rose had performed; and when at last,
far into the night, he backed into the cellar, he had scarcely strength
enough to stagger across to the rope-ladder.
He had made more than double the distance that had been accomplished
under the system of reliefs on any previous day, and the non-appearance
of the Confederates encouraged the hope that another day, without
interruption, would see the work completed. He therefore determined to
refresh himself by a night's sleep for the finish. The drooping spirits
of his party were revived by the report of his progress and his
unalterable confidence.
Monday morning dawned, and the great prison with its twelve hundred
captives was again astir. The general crowd did not suspect the
suppressed excitement and anxiety of the little party that waited
through that interminable day, which they felt must determine the fate
of their project.
Rose had repeated the instructions of the day before, and again
descended to Rat Hell with McDonald for his only helper. Johnson
reported all quiet, and McDonald taking up his former duties at the
tunnel's mouth, Rose once more entered with his chisel. It was now the
seventeenth day since the present tunnel was begun, and he resolved it
should be the last. Hour after hour passed, and still the busy chisel
was plied, and still the little wooden box with its freight of earth
made its monotonous trips from the digger to his comrade and back again.
From the early morning of Monday, February 8, 1864, until an hour after
midnight the next morning his work went on. As midnight approached, Rose
was nearly a physical wreck: the perspiration dripped from every pore of
his exhausted body; food he could not have eaten, if he had had it. His
labors thus far had given him a somewhat exaggerated estimate of his
physical powers. The sensation of fainting was strange to him, but his
staggering senses warned him that to faint where he was meant at once
his death and burial. He could scarcely inflate his lungs with the
poisonous air of the pit; his muscles quivered with increasing weakness
and the warning spasmodic tremor which their unnatural strain induced;
his head swam like that of a drowning person.
By midnight he had struck and passed beyond a post which he felt must be
in the yard. During the last few minutes he had directed his course
upward, and to relieve his cramped limbs he turned upon his back. His
strength was nearly gone; the feeble stream of air which his comrade was
trying, with all his might, to send to him from a distance of
fifty-three feet could no longer reach him through the deadly stench.
His senses reeled; he had not breath or strength enough to move backward
through his narrow grave. In the agony of suffocation he dropped the
dull chisel and beat his two fists against the roof of his grave with
the might of despair--when, blessed boon! the crust gave way and the
loosened earth showered upon his dripping face purple with agony; his
famished eye caught sight of a radiant star in the blue vault above
him; a flood of light and a volume of cool, delicious air poured over
him. At that very instant the sentinel's cry rang out like a
prophecy--"Half-past one, and all's well!"
Recovering quickly under the inspiring air, he dragged his body out of
the hole and made a careful survey of the yard in which he found
himself. He was under a shed, with a board fence between him and the
east-side sentinels, and the gable end of Libby loomed grimly against
the blue sky. He found the wagon-way under the south-side building
closed from the street by a gate fastened by a swinging bar, which,
after a good many efforts, he succeeded in opening. This was the only
exit to the street. As soon as the nearest sentinel's back was turned he
stepped out and walked quickly to the east. At the first corner he
turned north, carefully avoiding the sentinels in front of the
"Pemberton Buildings" (another military prison northeast of Libby), and
at the corner above this he went westward, then south to the edge of the
canal, and thus, by cautious moving, made a minute examination, of Libby
from all sides.
Having satisfied his desires, he retraced his steps to the yard. He
hunted up an old bit of heavy plank crept back into the tunnel feet
first, drew the plank over the opening to conceal it from the notice of
any possible visitors to the place, and crawled back to Rat Hell.
McDonald was overjoyed, and poor Johnson almost wept with delight, as
Rose handed one of them his victorious old chisel, and gave the other
some trifle he had picked up in the outer world as a token that the
Underground Railroad to God's Country was open.
Rose now climbed the rope-ladder, drew it up, rebuilt the fireplace wall
as usual, and, finding Hamilton, took him over near one of the windows
and broke the news to him. The brave fellow was almost speechless with
delight, and quickly hunting up the rest of the party, told them that
Colonel Rose wanted to see them down in the dining-room.
As they had been waiting news from their absent leader with feverish
anxiety for what had seemed to them all the longest day in their lives,
they instantly responded to the call, and flocked around Rose a few
minutes later in the dark kitchen where he waited them. As yet they did
not know what news he brought, and they could scarcely wait for him to
speak out; and when he announced, "Boys, the tunnel is finished," they
could hardly repress a cheer. They wrung his hand again and again, and
danced about with childish joy.
It was now nearly three o'clock in the morning. Rose and Hamilton were
ready to go out at once, and indeed were anxious to do so, since every
day of late had brought some new peril to their plans. None of the rest
however, were ready; and all urged the advantage of having a whole night
in which to escape through and beyond the Richmond fortifications,
instead of the few hours of darkness which now preceded the day. To this
proposition Rose and Hamilton somewhat reluctantly assented. It was
agreed that each man of the party should have the privilege of taking
one friend into his confidence, and that the second party of fifteen
thus formed should be obligated not to follow the working party out of
the tunnel until an hour had elapsed. Colonel H.C. Hobart, of the 21st
Wisconsin, was deputed to see that the program was observed. He was to
draw up the rope-ladder, hide it, and rebuild the wall; and the next
night was himself to lead out the second party, deputing some
trustworthy leader to follow with still another party on the third
night; and thus it was to continue until as many as possible should
escape.
On Tuesday evening, February 9, at seven o'clock, Colonel Rose assembled
his party in the kitchen, and, posting himself at the fireplace, which
he opened, waited until the last man went down. He bade Colonel Hobart
good-by, went down the hole, and waited until he had heard his comrade
pull up the ladder, and finally heard him replace the bricks in the
fireplace and depart. He now crossed Rat Hell to the entrance into the
tunnel, and placed the party in the order in which they were to go out.
He gave each a parting caution, thanked his brave comrades for their
faithful labors, and, feelingly shaking their hands, bade them God-speed
and farewell.
He entered the tunnel first, with Hamilton next, and was promptly
followed by the whole party through the tunnel and into the yard. He
opened the gate leading toward the canal, and signaled the party that
all was clear. Stepping out on the sidewalk as soon as the nearest
sentinel's back was turned, he walked briskly down the street to the
east, and a square below was joined by Hamilton. The others followed at
intervals of a few minutes, and disappeared in various directions in
groups usually of three.
The plan agreed upon between Colonels Rose and Hobart was frustrated by
information of the party's departure leaking out; and before nine
o'clock the knowledge of the existence of the tunnel and of the
departure of the first party was flashed over the crowded prison, which
was soon a convention of excited and whispering men. Colonel Hobart made
a brave effort to restore order, but the frenzied crowd that now
fiercely struggled for precedence at the fireplace was beyond human
control.
Some of them had opened the fireplace and were jumping down like sheep
into the cellar one after another. The colonel implored the maddened men
at least to be quiet, and put the rope-ladder in position and escaped
himself.
My companion, Sprague, was already asleep when I lay down that night;
but my other companion, Duenkel, who had been hunting for me, was very
much awake, and, seizing me by the collar, he whispered excitedly the
fact that Colonel Rose had gone out at the head of a party through a
tunnel. For a brief moment the appalling suspicion, that my friend's
reason had been dethroned by illness and captivity swept over my mind;
but a glance toward the window at the east end showed a quiet but
apparently excited group of men from other rooms, and I now observed
that several of them were bundled up for a march. The hope of regaining
liberty thrilled me like a current of electricity. Looking through the
window, I could see the escaping men appear one by one on the sidewalk
below, opposite the exit yard, and silently disappear, without hindrance
or challenge by the prison sentinels. While I was eagerly surveying this
scene, I lost track of Duenkel, who had gone in search of further
information, but ran against Lieutenant Harry Wilcox, of the 1st New
York, whom I knew, and who appeared to have the "tip" regarding the
tunnel. Wilcox and I agreed to unite our fortunes in the escape. My
shoes were nearly worn out, and my clothes were thin and ragged. I was
ill prepared for a journey in midwinter through the enemy's country:
happily I had my old overcoat, and this I put on. I had not a crumb of
food saved up, as did those who were posted; but as I was ill at the
time, my appetite was feeble.
Wilcox and I hurried to the kitchen, where we found several hundred men
struggling to be first at the opening in the fireplace. We took our
places behind them, and soon two hundred more closed us tightly in the
mass. The room was pitch-dark, and the sentinel could be seen through
the door-cracks, within a dozen feet of us. The fight for precedence was
savage, though no one spoke; but now and then fainting men begged to be
released. They begged in vain: certainly some of them must have been
permanently injured. For my own part, when I neared the stove I was
nearly suffocated; but I took heart when I saw but three more men
between me and the hole. At this moment a sound as of tramping feet was
heard, and some idiot on the outer edge of the mob startled us with the
cry, "The guards the guards!" A fearful panic ensued, and the entire
crowd bounded toward the stairway leading up to their sleeping-quarters.
The stairway was unbanistered, and some of the men were forced off the
edge and fell on those beneath. I was among the lightest in that crowd;
and when it broke and expanded I was taken off my feet, dashed to the
floor senseless, my head and one of my hands bruised and cut, and my
shoulder painfully injured by the boots of the men who rushed over me.
When I gathered my swimming wits I was lying in a pool of water. The
room seemed darker than before; and, to my grateful surprise, I was
alone. I was now convinced that it was a false alarm, and quickly
resolved to avail myself of the advantage of having the whole place to
myself. I entered the cavity feet first, but found it necessary to
remove my overcoat and push it through the opening, and it fell in the
darkness below.
I had now no comrade, having lost Wilcox in the stampede. Rose and his
party, being the first out, were several hours on their journey; and I
burned to be away, knowing well that my salvation depended on my passage
beyond the city defenses before the pursuing guards were on our trail,
when the inevitable discovery should come at roll-call. The fact that I
was alone I regretted; but I had served with McClellan in the Peninsula
campaign of 1862, I knew the country well from my frequent inspection of
war maps, and the friendly north star gave me my bearings. The
rope-ladder had either become broken or disarranged, but it afforded me
a short hold at the top; so I balanced myself, trusted to fortune, and
fell into Rat Hell, which was a rayless pit of darkness, swarming with
squealing rats, several of which I must have killed in my fall. I felt a
troop of them, run over my face and hands before I could regain my feet.
Several times I put my hand on them, and once I flung one from my
shoulder. Groping around, I found a stout stick or stave, put my back to
the wall, and beat about me blindly but with vigor.
In spite of the hurried instructions given me by Wilcox, I had a long
and horrible hunt over the cold surface of the cellar walls in my
efforts to find the entrance to the tunnel; and in two minutes after I
began feeling my way with my hands I had no idea in what part of the
place was the point where I had fallen: my bearings were completely
lost, and I must have made the circuit of Rat Hell several times. At my
entrance the rats seemed to receive me with cheers sufficiently hearty,
I thought; but my vain efforts to find egress seemed to kindle anew
their enthusiasm. They had received large reinforcements, and my march
around was now received with deafening squeaks. Finally, my exploring
hands fell upon a pair of heels which vanished at my touch. Here at last
was the narrow road to freedom! The heels proved to be the property of
Lieutenant Charles H. Morgan, 21st Wisconsin, a Chickamauga prisoner.
Just ahead of him in the tunnel was Lieutenant William L. Watson of the
same company and regiment. With my cut hand and bruised shoulder, the
passage through the cold, narrow grave was indescribably horrible, and
when I reached the terminus in the yard I was sick and faint. The
passage seemed to me to be a mile long; but the crisp, pure air and the
first glimpse of freedom, the sweet sense of being out of doors, and the
realization that I had taken the first step toward liberty and home,
had a magical effect in my restoration.
I have related before, in a published reminiscence,[15] my experience
and that of my two companions above named in the journey toward the
Union lines, and our recapture; but the more important matter relating
to the plot itself has never been published. This is the leading motive
of this article, and therefore I will not intrude the details of my
personal experience into the narrative. It is enough to say that it was
a chapter of hairbreadth escapes, hunger, cold, suffering, and, alas!
failure. We were run down and captured in a swamp several miles north of
Charlottesville, and when we were taken our captors pointed out to us
the smoke over a Federal outpost. We were brought back to Libby, and put
in one of the dark, narrow dungeons. I was afterward confined in Macon,
Georgia; Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina; and in Charlotte,
North Carolina. After a captivity of just a year and eight months,
during which I had made five escapes and was each time retaken, I was at
last released on March 1, 1865, at Wilmington, North Carolina.
[Footnote 15: "Philadelphia Times," October 28, 1882.]
Great was the panic in Libby when the next morning's roll revealed to
the astounded Confederates that 109 of their captives were missing; and
as the fireplace had been rebuilt by some one and the opening of the
hole in the yard had been covered by the last man who went out, no human
trace guided the keepers toward a solution of the mystery. The Richmond
papers having announced the "miraculous" escape of 109 Yankee officers
from Libby, curious crowds flocked thither for several days, until some
one, happening to remove the plank in the yard, revealed the tunnel. A
terrified negro was driven into the hole at the point of the bayonet,
and thus made a trip to Rat Hell that nearly turned him white.
Several circumstances at this time combined to make this escape
peculiarly exasperating to the Confederates. In obedience to repeated
appeals from the Richmond newspapers, iron bars had but recently been
fixed in all the prison windows for better security, and the guard had
been considerably reinforced. The columns of these same journals had
just been aglow with accounts of the daring and successful escape of the
Confederate General John Morgan and his companions from the Columbus
(Ohio) jail. Morgan had arrived in Richmond on the 8th of January,
exactly a month prior to the completion of the tunnel, and was still the
lion of the Confederate capital.
1. Streight's room; 2. Milroy's room; 3. Commandant's office; 4.
Chickamauga room (upper); 5. Chickamauga room (lower); 6. Dining-room;
7. Carpenter's shop (middle cellar); 8. Gettysburg room (upper); 9.
Gettysburg room (lower); 10. Hospital room; 11. East or "Rat Hell"
cellar; 12. South side Canal street, ten feet lower than Carey street;
13. North side Carey street, ground sloping toward Canal; 14. Open lot;
15. Tunnel; 16. Fence; 17. Shed; 18. Kerr's warehouse; 19. Office James
River Towing Co.; 20. Gate; 21. Prisoners escaping; 22. West cellar.]
At daylight a plank was seen suspended on the outside of the east wall;
this was fastened by a blanket-rope to one of the window-bars, and was,
of course, a trick to mislead the Confederates. General John H. Winder,
then in charge of all the prisoners in the Confederacy, with his
headquarters in Richmond, was furious when the news reached him. After a
careful external examination of the building, and a talk, not of the
politest kind, with Major Turner, he reached the conclusion that such an
escape had but one explanation--the guards had been bribed. Accordingly
the sentinels on duty were marched off under arrest to Castle Thunder,
where they were locked up and searched for "greenbacks." The thousand
and more prisoners still in Libby were compensated, in a measure, for
their failure to escape by the panic they saw among the "Rebs."
Messengers and despatches were soon flying in all directions, and all
the horse, foot, and dragoons of Richmond were in pursuit of the
fugitives before noon. Only one man of the whole escaping party was
retaken inside of the city limits.[16] Of the 109 who got out that
night, 59 reached the Union lines, 48 were recaptured, and 2 were
drowned.
[Footnote 16: Captain Gates, of the 33d Ohio.]
Colonel Streight and several other officers who had been chosen by the
diggers of the tunnel to follow them out, in accordance with the
agreement already referred to, lay concealed for a week in a vacant
house, where they were fed by loyal friends, and escaped to the Federal
lines when the first excitement had abated.
After leaving Libby, Rose and Hamilton turned northward and cautiously
walked on a few squares, when suddenly they encountered some
Confederates who were guarding a military hospital. Hamilton retreated
quickly and ran off to the east; but Rose, who was a little in advance,
walked boldly by on the opposite walk, and was not challenged; and thus
the two friends separated.
Hamilton, after several days of wandering and fearful exposure, came
joyfully upon a Union picket squad, received the care he painfully
needed, and was soon on his happy journey home.
A. Break in fireplace on floor above; B. End of tunnel; CCC. Course of
party escaping; D. Shed; E. Cook-room (abandoned Oct., '63); F.
Lumber-room; G. Office of James River Towing Company; HH. Gates; III.
Doors; J. Cells for condemned prisoners; K. First tunnel (abandoned); L.
Fence.]
Rose passed out of the city of Richmond to the York River Railroad, and
followed its track to the Chickahominy bridge. Finding this guarded, he
turned to the right, and as the day was breaking he came upon a camp of
Confederate cavalry. His blue uniform made it exceedingly dangerous to
travel in daylight in this region; and seeing a large sycamore log that
was hollow, he crawled into it. The February air was keen and biting,
but he kept his cramped position until late in the afternoon; and all
day he could hear the loud talk in the camp and the neighing of the
horses. Toward night he came cautiously forth, and finding the
Chickahominy fordable within a few hundred yards, he succeeded in wading
across. The uneven bed of the river, however, led him into several deep
holes, and before he reached the shore his scanty raiment was thoroughly
soaked. He trudged on through the woods as fast as his stiffened limbs
would bear him, borne up by the hope of early deliverance, and made a
brave effort to shake off the horrible ague. He had not gone far,
however, when he found himself again close to some Confederate cavalry,
and was compelled once more to seek a hiding-place. The day seemed of
interminable length, and he tried vainly in sleep to escape from hunger
and cold. His teeth chattered in his head, and when he rose at dark to
continue his journey his tattered clothes were frozen stiff. In this
plight he pushed on resolutely, and was obliged to wade to his waist for
hundreds of yards through one of those deep and treacherous morasses
that proved such deadly fever-pools for McClellan's army in the campaign
of 1862. Finally he reached the high ground, and as the severe exertion
had set his blood again in motion and loosened his limbs, he was making
better progress, when suddenly he found himself near a Confederate
picket. This picket he easily avoided, and, keeping well in the shadow
of the forest and shunning the roads, he pressed forward with increasing
hopes of success. He had secured a box of matches before leaving Libby;
and as the cold night came on and he felt that he was really in danger
of freezing to death, he penetrated into the center of the cedar grove
and built a fire in a small and secluded hollow. He felt that this was
hazardous, but the necessity was desperate, since with his stiffened
limbs he could no longer move along fast enough to keep the warmth of
life in his body. To add to his trouble, his foot, which had been broken
in Tennessee previous to his capture, was now giving him great pain, and
threatened to cripple him wholly; indeed, it would stiffen and disable
the best of limbs to compass the journey he had made in darkness over
strange, uneven, and hard-frozen ground, and through rivers, creeks, and
bogs, and this without food or warmth.
The fire was so welcome that he slept soundly--so soundly that waking in
the early morning he found his boot-legs and half his uniform burned up,
the ice on the rest of it probably having prevented its total
destruction.
Resuming his journey much refreshed, he reached Crump's Cross-roads,
where he successfully avoided another picket. He traveled all day,
taking occasional short rests, and before dark had reached New Kent
Court-house. Here again he saw some pickets, but by cautious flanking
managed to pass them; but in crossing an open space a little farther on
he was seen by a cavalryman, who at once put spurs to his horse and rode
up to Rose, and, saluting him, inquired if he belonged to the New Kent
Cavalry. Rose had on a gray cap, and seeing that he had a stupid sort of
fellow to deal with, instantly answered, "Yes," whereupon the trooper
turned his horse and rode back. A very few moments were enough to show
Rose that the cavalryman's report had failed to satisfy his comrades,
whom he could see making movements for his capture. He plunged through a
laurel thicket, and had no sooner emerged than he saw the Confederates
deploying around it in confidence that their game was bagged. He dashed
on as fast as his injured foot would let him, and entered a tract of
heavily timbered land that rose to the east of this thicket. At the
border of the grove he found another picket post, and barely escaped the
notice of several of the men. The only chance of escape lay through a
wide, clear field before him, and even this was in full view from the
grove that bordered it, and this he knew would soon swarm with his
pursuers.
Across the center of this open field, which was fully half a mile wide,
a ditch ran, which, although but a shallow gully, afforded a partial
concealment. Rose, who could now hear the voices of the Confederates
nearer and nearer, dove into the ditch as the only chance, and dropping
on his hands and knees crept swiftly forward to the eastward. In this
cramped position his progress was extremely painful, and his hands were
torn by the briers and stones; but forward he dashed, fully expecting a
shower of bullets every minute. At last he reached the other end of the
half-mile ditch, breathless and half dead, but without having once
raised his head above the gully.
Emerging from this field, he found himself in the Williamsburg road, and
bordering the opposite side was an extensive tract thickly covered with
pines. As he crossed and entered this tract he looked back and could see
his enemies, whose movements showed that they were greatly puzzled and
off the scent. When at a safe distance he sought a hiding-place and took
a needed rest of several hours.
He then resumed his journey, and followed the direction of the
Williamsburg road, which he found picketed at various points, so that it
was necessary to avoid open spaces. Several times during the day he saw
squads of Confederate cavalry passing along the road so near that he
could hear their talk. Near nightfall he reached Diasen Bridge, where he
successfully passed another picket. He kept on until nearly midnight,
when he lay down by a great tree and, cold as he was, slept soundly
until daylight. He now made a careful reconnoissance, and found near the
road the ruins of an old building which, he afterward learned, was
called "Burnt Ordinary."
He now found himself almost unable to walk with his injured foot, but,
nerved by the yet bright hope of liberty, he once more went his weary
way in the direction of Williamsburg. Finally he came to a place where
there were some smoking fagots and a number of tracks, indicating it to
have been a picket post of the previous night. He was now nearing
Williamsburg, which, he was inclined to believe from such meager
information as had reached Libby before his departure, was in possession
of the Union forces. Still, he knew that this was territory that was
frequently changing hands, and was therefore likely to be under a close
watch. From this on he avoided the roads wholly, and kept under cover as
much as it was possible; and if compelled to cross an open field at all,
he did so in a stooping position. He was now moving in a southeasterly
direction, and coming again to the margin of a wide opening, he saw, to
his unutterable joy, a body of Union troops advancing along the road
toward him.
Thoroughly worn out, Rose, believing that his deliverers were at hand,
sat down to await their approach. His pleasant reverie was disturbed by
a sound behind and near him, and turning quickly he was startled to see
three soldiers in the road along which the troops first seen were
advancing. The fact that these men had not been noticed before gave Rose
some uneasiness for a moment; but as they wore blue uniforms, and
moreover seemed to take no note of the approaching Federal troops, all
things seemed to indicate that they were simply an advanced detail of
the same body. This seemed to be further confirmed by the fact that the
trio were now moving down the road, apparently with the intent of
joining the larger body; and as the ground to the east rose to a crest,
both of the bodies were a minute later shut off from Rose's view.
In the full confidence that all was right he rose to his feet and walked
toward the crest to get a better view of everything and greet his
comrades of the loyal blue. A walk of a hundred yards brought him again
in sight of the three men, who now noticed and challenged him.
In spite of appearances a vague suspicion forced itself upon Rose, who,
however, obeyed the summons and continued to approach the party, who now
watched him with fixed attention. As he came closer to the group, the
brave but unfortunate soldier saw that he was lost.
For the first time the three seemed to be made aware of the approach of
the Federals, and to show consequent alarm and haste. The unhappy Rose
saw before the men spoke that their blue uniform was a disguise, and the
discovery brought a savage expression to his lips. He hoped and tried to
convince his captors that he was a Confederate, but all in vain; they
retained him as their prisoner, and now told him that they were
Confederates. Rose, in the first bitter moment of his misfortune,
thought seriously of breaking away to his friends so temptingly near;
but his poor broken foot and the slender chance of escaping three
bullets at a few yards made this suicide, and he decided to wait for a
better chance, and this came sooner than he expected.
One of the men appeared to be an officer, who detailed one of his
companions to conduct Rose to the rear in the direction of Richmond. The
prisoner went quietly with his guard, the other two men tarried a little
to watch the advancing Federals, and now Rose began to limp like a man
who was unable to go farther. Presently the ridge shut them off from the
view of the others. Rose, who had slyly been staggering closer and
closer to the guard, suddenly sprang upon the man, and before he had
time to wink had twisted his gun from his grasp, discharged it into the
air, flung it down, and ran off as fast as his poor foot would let him
toward the east and so as to avoid the rest of the Confederates. The
disarmed Confederate made no attempt at pursuit, nor indeed did the
other two, who were now seen retreating at a run across the adjacent
fields.
Rose's heart bounded with new hope, for he felt that he would be with
his advancing comrades in a few minutes at most. All at once a squad of
Confederates, hitherto unseen, rose up in his very path, and beat him
down with the butts of their muskets. All hands now rushed around and
secured him, and one of the men called out excitedly, "Hurry up, boys;
the Yankees are right here!" They rushed their prisoner into the wooded
ravine, and here they were joined by the man whom Rose had just
disarmed. He was in a savage mood, and declared it to be his particular
desire to fill Rose full of Confederate lead. The officer in charge
rebuked the man, however, and compelled him to cool down, and he went
along with an injured air that excited the merriment of his comrades.
The party continued its retreat to Barhamsville, thence to the White
House on the Pamunkey River, and finally to Richmond, where Rose was
again restored to Libby, and, like the writer, was confined for a number
of days in a narrow and loathsome cell. On the 30th of April his
exchange was effected for a Confederate colonel, and on the 6th of July,
1864, he rejoined his regiment, in which he served with conspicuous
gallantry to the close of the war.
As already stated, Hamilton reached the Union lines safely after many
vicissitudes, and did brave service in the closing scenes of the
rebellion. He is now a resident of Reedyville, Kentucky. Johnson, whose
enforced confinement in Rat Hell gave him a unique fame in Libby, also
made good his escape, and now lives at North Pleasantville, Kentucky.
Of the fifteen men who dug the successful tunnel, four are dead, viz.:
Fitzsimmons, Gallagher, Garbett, and McDonald. Captain W.S.B. Randall
lives at Hillsboro, Highland County, Ohio; Colonel Terrance Clark at
Paris, Edgar County, Illinois; Captain Eli Foster at Chicago; Colonel
N.S. McKean at Collinsville, Madison County, Illinois; and Captain J.C.
Fislar at Lewiston, I.T. The addresses of Captains Lucas, Simpson, and
Mitchell are unknown at this writing.
Colonel Rose has served faithfully almost since the end of the war with
the 16th United States Infantry, in which he holds a captain's
commission. No one meeting him now would hear from his reticent lips, or
read in his placid face, the thrilling story that links his name in so
remarkable a manner with the history of the famous Bastile of the
Confederacy.