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.
[Illustration: LIBBY PRISON IN 1884.]
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 cooeperating 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.