Great American Adventure Stories

by Tom McCarthy

  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 meantime, 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 wagonway 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. 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 clotheslines 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.

  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 oft
en 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 someone 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” 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 upstairs.

  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 upstairs 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 upstairs, 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 Js 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 upstairs, 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.

  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 to the 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.