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!"
[Illustration: LIBERTY!]
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.
[Illustration: FIGHTING THE RATS.]
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.
[Illustration: SECTION OF INTERIOR OF LIBBY PRISON AND TUNNEL.
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.
[Illustration: GROUND-PLAN OF LIBBY PRISON AND SURROUNDINGS.
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."