Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

by Rossiter Johnson; Selden Connor; John Brown Gordon; Henry W. B. Howard; O. O. Howard; John Tyler Morgan; John Clark Ridpath

PRISONS AND ESCAPES.

BY GEORGE L. KILMER.

ESCAPE OF THREE WAR CORRESPONDENTS FROM SALISBURY PRISON—SEVENTY PRISONERS ESCAPED, BUT ONLY FIVE REACHED THE NORTH—LONG AND PERILOUS JOURNEY THROUGH THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY—"OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEATH, OUT OF THE MOUTH OF HELL"—A LEAP FOR LIBERTY—FOUR UNION PRISONERS ESCAPED NEAR CHARLESTON, S. C.—JOURNEY THROUGH SWAMPS AND OVER MOUNTAINS TO TENNESSEE—ESCAPES FROM ANDERSONVILLE—TUNNELLING UNDER THE STOCKADE—REMARKABLE ESCAPE OF THE CONFEDERATE GENERAL MORGAN—COLONEL ROSE'S TUNNEL AT LIBBY PRISON.

Albert D. Richardson and Junius Henri Browne, war correspondents of the New York Tribune, were taken prisoners from a Union vessel that attempted to pass the Confederate batteries at Grand Gulf, Miss. After passing some time in Castle Thunder and Libby Prison, Richmond, they were sent to Salisbury, N. C., as a punishment for endeavoring to escape, and while there, W. T. Davies of the Cincinnati Gazette united his fortunes with the Tribune men.

LIBBY PRISON, RICHMOND, VA. (From a war-time photograph.)

Again and again plans to obtain their freedom were frustrated by some trifle, until desperation spurred them to the most daring attempts, but these also ended in failure. One day a body of prisoners, led by Robert E. Boulger of the Twenty-fourth Michigan, rushed upon a guard relief, seized their muskets, and attacked the sentinels on their posts. In their haste, all rushed to one point and attempted to pass the fence; but a couple of field-pieces and the muskets of the reserve guard turned upon that one point, quelled the insurrection in three minutes, killing and wounding one hundred men. A scheme of tunnelling was then proposed and pushed far toward success, but the prison commandant took alarm and posted a second line of guards, one hundred feet outside the stockade, and that rendered egress by tunnels out of the question. After spending ten months in the Salisbury prison, Richardson and his two companions determined to take heavy risks in order to get out and make their way to the mountains of East Tennessee. The outlook, according to the statistics of escapes during their experiences in that prison, was not at all promising, for out of seventy prisoners that had passed the guard, but five had reached the North. The others had been retaken or had been shot in the mountains. By extraordinary good luck the trio passed the guards on the night of December 17, 1864. All three were on duty at the time in the hospital, and Davies and Browne held passes permitting them to go outside the first line of sentinels to a Confederate dispensary for supplies. This privilege had been enjoyed so long that they were allowed to go on sight. The night of the escape, Browne loaned his pass to Richardson, and with Davies walked coolly out to the dispensary. Richardson describes his exit as follows:

"A few minutes later, taking a box filled with the bottles in which the medicines were usually brought, and giving it to a lad who assisted me in my hospital duties, I started to follow them. As if in great haste, we walked rapidly toward the fence. When we reached the gate, I took the box from the boy and said to him, for the benefit of the sentinel, of course: 'I am going outside to get these bottles filled. I shall be back in fifteen minutes, and want you to remain right here to take and distribute them among the hospitals. Do not go away.' The lad, understanding me perfectly, replied, 'Yes, sir,' and I attempted to pass the sentinel by mere assurance. He stopped me with his musket, demanding:

"'Have you a pass, sir?'

"'Certainly I have a pass,' I replied with all the indignation I could assume. 'Have you not seen it often enough to know it by this time?'

"Apparently a little dumbfounded, he modestly replied: 'Perhaps I have; but they are strict with us, and I am not quite sure.'"

The sentinel examined the document which was all right in Browne's hands, but all wrong in Richardson's. But he did not know the difference, and told Richardson to pass on. Once outside he met several Confederate officials who knew him, and knew too that he was out of his place, but the "peculiarly honest and business-like look of that medicine box" threw them off their guard. Instead of entering the dispensary, Richardson hid his box and slipped under a convenient shelter. At dark his friends joined him, and the three passed the outer guard without difficulty. For the Tribune men this was the end of twenty months of captivity. The first night and day were passed in the barn of a friendly citizen within one mile of the prison. The second night, a Confederate lieutenant belonging to the Sons of America, an order of Southerners who secretly aided the Union, met them and gave them full directions how and where to reach friends on their journey. Then they set out on their long winter tramp, poorly clad, and weak from long confinement.

The main guide of the refugees was a railroad running west, but they were often obliged to leave the line to avoid crowded settlements, and were frequently lost in making those detours. In such emergencies they relied upon chance friends among the slaves to direct them aright.

On the morning of the seventh day of their escape, they found that they had made fifty miles of their direct journey. December 30th they crossed the Yadkin River, now getting into a region where Union homes were plenty. Communications had to be opened with women, as the men were "lying out" in order to avoid impressment by the hated Confederacy; and, after allaying all suspicion, our refugees found these people of great service.

"The men of the community were walking arsenals. Each had a trusty rifle, one or two navy revolvers, a great bowie-knife, a haversack, and a canteen."

Guided and fed by the friends they found here, the three reached Tennessee early in January; but their perils were not yet over, for the mountains were constantly patrolled by Confederate guerillas. Once they had to pass within a quarter of a mile of a notorious rendezvous, called Little Richmond. An invalid arose from his bed and guided them past the danger at the risk of his life. On another occasion their guide, the celebrated Dan Ellis, aroused the party from sleep with the startling announcement: "We have walked right into a nest of rebels. Several hundred are within a few miles, and eighty in this immediate vicinity!"

They scattered in various directions, Richardson and his party—for others had joined them—being led by a young woman who often performed this service, though her name, Melvina Stephens, was never revealed until the war had closed.

On the 14th of January, 1865, the Tribune printed this despatch from its long-lost correspondent:

"KNOXVILLE, TENN., January 13, 1865.

"Out of the jaws of death; out of the mouth of hell.

"ALBERT D. RICHARDSON."

He had travelled three hundred and forty miles since leaving the prison, twenty-seven days before.

GUARDING CONFEDERATE PRISONERS. (From a War Department photograph.)

Of the thousands of prisoners held by either side during the four years of the war, those who escaped and succeeded in reaching their own lines were exceedingly few, although the attempts at escape were numerous, and a good many got away from the prisons only to be brought back captives again in a few days. The most notable adventure of this kind was an escape from Libby Prison by a hundred and eight officers in February, 1864. In that crowded prison, which was an old tobacco warehouse, the prisoners had little to do but play checkers on squares of the floor marked out with their pocket knives, play cards, tell stories, and devise plans for escape. One of them discovered a way of getting into the basement, and, by removing stones, making a hole through the eastern foundation wall. With a few assistants he then proceeded to dig a tunnel across the breadth of the yard. The earth that was taken out was dumped in a dark corner of the cellar where it never attracted attention. The work had to be carried on very secretly, not only to escape the notice of the guards, but even to prevent the knowledge of it from reaching any prisoner who might not be trustworthy. When the tunnel was about ten yards long a slight opening was made to the surface of the ground for light and ventilation; and an old shoe thrown out at this opening in the night, and resting near it upon the surface, enabled the tunnellers, looking from the windows of the prison in the daytime, to get their bearings and determine how much farther they must dig in order to pass under the fence. When all was done the night of February 9th was fixed for the escape. One of the officers who passed through the tunnel says of himself and two companions: "Each man had an entire suit of clothes, a double suit of underclothes, the pair of boots in which he stood on entering the prison, an overcoat, and a cap. In common we possessed a coil of rope, a diminutive hatchet, one pint of brandy, a half pint of extract of Jamaica ginger, two days' scant rations of dried meat and hard bread, one pipe, and a bit of tobacco. The tunnel was about fifty-three feet long, and so small in diameter that in order to pass through it was necessary to lie flat on one's face, propelling with one hand and the feet, the other hand being thrown over the back to diminish the breadth of the shoulders and carry overcoat, rations, etc. Early in the evening, as I was seated at the card table, Randolph tapped me on the shoulder. 'The work is finished,' he said. 'The first party went through soon after dark; there is no time to lose.' Every one knew it then. We possessed only the advantage of being perfectly cool and having a plan agreed upon. The excitement in the prison was of the wildest kind. Parties were formed, plans arranged, farewells exchanged, all in less time than one can describe. We dropped one by one into the cellar. I remember well the instructions: 'Feet first; back to the wall; get down on your knees; make a half face to the right, and grasp the spike in the wall below with your right hand; lower yourself down; feel for the knotted rope below with your legs.' Then one had but to drop in the loose straw shaken from hospital beds to be in the cellar. To walk across that foul pit in the dark was no easy matter; but it was soon accomplished, and together we crouched at the entrance of the tunnel. Only one at a time; and as about three minutes were consumed in effecting the passage, progress was quite slow. Of our party Randolph was the first to enter. 'I'm going. Wait till I get through before you start.' It seemed that his long legs would never disappear; but a parting kick in the face, as he wriggled desperately in, quite reassured me. When a cool blast of air drawing through the tunnel gave the welcome assurance that the passage was clear, in I went. So well did the garment of earth fit, that at moments my movements corresponded somewhat to those of a bolt forcing its way through a rifled gun. Breath failed when I was about two-thirds through, but a score or more of vigorous kicks brought me to the earth's surface where Randolph awaited my coming. With sundry whispered instructions about getting out without making undue noise and without breaking my skull against the bottom of a board fence, he then crept away toward the street, keeping in the shadow of a high brick wall, leaving me to assist in turn and instruct the colonel, who could now be heard thundering through the tunnel. Dirty but jubilant, we were soon standing in the shadow of a low brick arch, outside of which a sentinel paced backward and forward, coming sometimes within two yards of our position. One after another stole out of the archway, and we met, as agreed, at the corner of the second street below. Arm in arm, whistling and singing, we turned and struck out, strong and hopeful, for home and liberty." The one hundred and eight men who escaped through this tunnel followed different plans and routes for getting within the National lines, but the greater part of them were recaptured. The party of which the officer just quoted was one, after twelve days of journeying through swamps and by-ways, fed and guided by the friendly negroes, at length reached the National lines on the Pamunkey.

RUINS OF CHARLESTON, S. C.

A LEAP FOR LIBERTY¹

¹ Rewritten (by permission) from Captain Drake's narrative as printed in the private history of the Ninth New Jersey Volunteers.

On the morning of October 6, 1864, a party of six hundred captive Union officers were put on board of a train of box-cars to be transported from the jail yard at Charleston to prison quarters at Columbia. Among the number was Capt. J. Madison Drake, of the Ninth New Jersey volunteers, who had been a prisoner of war five months and an inmate during that time of three different prisons—Libby, Macon, Ga., and Charleston. Although he had been foiled in many attempts to escape, he resolved on one more effort, and, having received warning of the trip to Columbia, induced three fellow-prisoners to join him: Capt. H. H. Todd, Eighth New Jersey; Capt. J. E. Lewis, Eleventh Connecticut; and Capt. Alfred Grant, Nineteenth Wisconsin. While the train was crawling slowly on toward Columbia, the bold projector of the scheme managed to remove the gun-caps from the nipples of the muskets of several guards on the car where the four friends were; and as soon as dusk came on, the party at a signal took their daring leap. They landed in a cypress swamp on Congaree River, and found themselves waist deep in water and mud. A volley of shots from all the guards followed the fugitives, but no one was hurt, as the train was running under good headway. A night and a day were passed in the swamp, and although the barking of dogs and shouting of men indicated that pursuers had been sent out, the runaways were not disturbed. The second night a bright new moon arose, and they started on a systematic journey toward the Union lines in Tennessee.

Before leaving Charleston, one of the party had found a school map of South Carolina, and with this guide a course had been studied out. They decided to hug the swamps and woods by day, and at night use the fields and roads, and spend as little time as possible in sleep until the mountains of North Carolina were reached. Their chief guide-mark in South Carolina was the Wateree River.

At the end of a week their rations had all been consumed, and in desperation the wanderers began to think of food to the exclusion of all else. Captain Drake says that in these times they heartily yearned for the government "hard tack" and the contractor's beef they had so often anathematized on the march and in camp.

But fortune will favor the bold, and one night, as they halted on a roadside to debate whether it should be a quest for bread or for a road to liberty, a dark form came shambling along the road, and in the moonlight they saw at a distance that it was an old negro with a basket on his arm. Without ceremony the famished men crowded around the old man, and finding that he had in his basket a "pone" of corn-bread, they seized it and began to devour it ravenously. After a time the situation was explained, and when the negro learned who the highwaymen were, he supplied a quantity of meal and salt, and sent them on their way mentally resolved to cultivate acquaintance with colored folks as often as possible.

Not until several hundred miles had been placed between their fainting feet and Charleston did the hapless fugitives feel a sense of freedom. Often their fears and alarms were causeless, but they suffered loss of vitality all the same. Sometimes seeming misfortunes proved to be blessings. One night a pack of dogs chased them into a crowded village, and they took refuge in a graveyard vault. There Captain Drake found a copy of a local newspaper, warning the people to be on guard for escaped Union prisoners. The escaped prisoners themselves got the benefit of the hint. At another time some Confederate cavalrymen chased them on the high-road, and they escaped by getting into a dense wood, where the horses couldn't follow. While wandering about, they fell in with a loyal mountaineer, who took them to his home, fed them, and directed them to other Unionists.

Many of the men met with in the mountains were of the class known as "lyers out," deserters from the Confederate army, and fugitive conscripts. A hundred or more of these men were persuaded to join Drake's party on their tramp toward the Union lines. Thus reinforced with guides and armed companions, the prospects of the runaway prisoners began to brighten. But they were not out of the woods by a long way, as the sequel proved.

When the fugitives drew near the Union lines the danger of capture increased, for a cordon of mountain rangers patrolled the region to head off any fortunate ones who got thus far on the journey homeward. The mountains were simply barren wastes, the few cabins had to be shunned, and the only food to be obtained was wild game which the rifles of the "lyers out" brought down. In the uplands the poor fellows were hounded by "rangers," and in the valleys mounted Confederates dashed about on all sides.

At length the party reached the vicinity of Bull's Gap, a railway pass through the mountains, and guarded by Union troops as an outpost of Knoxville. The chief scout announced that the gap was fifteen miles from the foot of the hill whence it was first sighted, and that, once reached, the refugees would be safe. The news stimulated the men anew, and they started down the mountain with their eyes riveted on the gap, for fear, as Drake says, it would take wings and flee. Alas! alas! The unexpected happens in war if nowhere else.

The gap didn't exactly take wings and flee, but the ubiquitous General Breckenridge, with an army at his back, fell like a thunderbolt upon the Union garrison at the pass, defeated and routed the entire force and hurled them backward at mounted double-quick pace toward Knoxville; and, presto! the gap was closed in the very faces of the yearning-eyed, broken-bodied pilgrims. Think of it—at the end of those terrible weeks of endurance and suffering, to find a hostile army springing across the path at a bound, and its scouts and patrols beating every byway and bush in the region for the luckless strays of the fleeing enemy!

A young woman of the mountains volunteered to scout toward the gap and bring news to the refugee camp. She simply learned that Breckenridge was sweeping the country of Union troops and marching upon Knoxville.

At the same time it was discovered that a band of Confederate partisans were on the trail of the fugitives, and to escape this new danger they found comparative shelter in a ravine. Two of the men who had leaped from the car with Drake, Captains Todd and Grant, ventured out to obtain rations, which were sadly needed, as they were all living on dry corn. During the night mounted men attacked the bivouac, and the refugees scattered, every man for himself. At the end of a week they fell in with a cavalry patrol, and were once more, after forty-nine days' wandering, under the protection of the Stars and Stripes.

ATTEMPTS AT ESCAPE FROM ANDERSONVILLE.

Escapes from Andersonville, except through the portals of death—that is, complete escape to the Union lines—were exceedingly rare. Hundreds, through one device or another, succeeded in getting outside of the stockade, but the prison was so strongly surrounded with guards and forts and quarters occupied with zealous attendants, that it was difficult for a prisoner to elude the detective on the outside even when he had succeeded in passing the main barrier. Adding to this the existence of the deep swamps and vast forests just beyond the camp precincts, in which a stranger to the locality would be only too sure to lose his way, it will be seen that to enter Andersonville was indeed to leave "all hope behind." The favorite method of attempting escape was by tunnelling, for the great extent of the camp area, some twenty-five acres, and its crowded condition, made the work of excavation, without danger of discovery by the guards and keepers, comparatively easy. Another favorable circumstance was the fact that prisoners were allowed to dig wells to supply drinking water, and the grounds were everywhere dotted with piles of fresh earth that had been thrown up in consequence.

In order to excavate a tunnel, the prisoners contemplating escape would commence a lateral shaft a few feet below the mouth of one of these wells, located near the stockade; and as the work was done at night, the earth thus removed was carried in small quantities and deposited on the piles of fresh earth thrown out from the newly sunken wells. The tools used were of the rudest kind—tin plates, cups, and knives with which to loosen the earth, and bare hands to scoop it into the haversacks, or bags improvised from clothes and pieces of blanket; and in this manner these tunnels were frequently extended, not only beyond the stockade, but even beyond the outer line of prison guards. Yet, although hundreds passed out—as many as one hundred escaped through one tunnel in a single night, late in 1864—they were invariably brought back; sometimes through the treachery of spies, who mingled with the prisoners, and at other times by hunters with their dogs, who were constantly patrolling the vicinity of the camp, and, in fact, the entire region, in search of deserters from the Confederate army and runaway slaves, as well as fugitive prisoners. Not one well-authenticated case of a prisoner getting out through a tunnel, and making his way North, is to be found on record.

NATIONAL CEMETARY, RICHMOND, VA.

Another method of escape from the enclosure was by strolling beyond the sight of the guards when allowed to go out to the forests for wood; some, again, tried hiding in the huge boxes used for bringing prisoners into the camp, and many were missed from their quarters who had succeeded for the time being in misleading their guards, but eventually the fugitives turned up elsewhere; while such as enlisted in the Confederate army, this being their last hope of escape, soon reappeared, either as willing prisoners or deserters.

One tunnel, which had been carried under and beyond the stockade, was broken into by a severe flood, and the stockade undermined, which opened the celebrated "providential spring."

In August, 1864, when prisoners were dying from the use of unwholesome drinking water, a heavy thunder storm flooded the little brook that, running through the enclosure, passed in and out under the stockade. The rushing element not only broke in the roof of the tunnel, but loosened a quantity of earth which, since the construction of the stockade, had dammed up a copious stream of clear, fresh water, its original course passing right through the prison quarters. Some attributed the reopening to the action of lightning, while others looked upon it as a direct interposition of Heaven for their relief. But, whatever the cause, it supplied the prisoners with an abundance of good water through the remainder of their stay, and is still in existence.

MORGAN'S ESCAPE.

The account of the capture and escape of General Morgan as here given is condensed from an article by Samuel B. Taylor, originally published in the Cincinnati Tribune.

In the summer of 1863, General Morgan's command made, through Southern Ohio, one of those raids which were the most daring and successful in the history of modern and ancient warfare. In that instance he did not meet with his usual great success, for his raid terminated, in July of that year, with the capture of himself and sixty-eight of his officers and men. By order of General Burnside, he and a number of his officers were confined in the Ohio Penitentiary, at Columbus.

"We were each placed in a separate cell, in the first and second range or tier of cells on the south side of the east wing of the prison. These cells were let into a solid block of masonry, one hundred and sixty feet long and twenty-five feet thick. They opened into a hall twelve feet wide and one hundred and sixty feet in length. Then, as now, the prison buildings and their yard were enclosed by a solid stone wall thirty feet high and four feet in thickness, and level on top.

"We at length became so desperate from confinement that we determined to escape, no matter at what hazard. But how was escape to be effected?

"From five o'clock P.M. till seven A.M. we were locked in our cells, with no means of communication. Through the day we were allowed to roam about the large hall on to which our cells opened and to converse freely with each other, though there was an armed sentry at either end of this hall, through which the regular keepers of the prison passed at frequent and regular intervals. We discussed every possible and impossible plan of escape, as we thought, but could hit upon none that seemed feasible.

"We had been some three months in durance vile, when, in consequence of an insult that was offered to one of our number, Capt. Thomas A. Hines, by the deputy warden, a plan was evolved by which we did finally succeed in making our escape. Captain Hines retired to his cell about eight o'clock A.M., vowing that food should not pass his lips and that sleep should not rest upon his eyelids until he had thought out some plan of escape that should be practicable.

"About a quarter to twelve o'clock he came to me and said that he had hit upon a plan which he thought would do. At all events he was determined to try it. He then informed me that he had noticed that the walls of his cell, instead of being damp, as they naturally would have been from the fact that they were built upon a level with the ground outside, were perfectly dry. From this he concluded that there must be an air chamber beneath. Now, if such should be the case, Captain Hines's plan was to run a tunnel from it through the foundation into the yard, and then to escape over the prison wall.

"The cells were built in five tiers. Some of our party occupied the lowest or ground tier, while others, including General Morgan himself, occupied the second tier. Of course only those in the ground tier could escape by means of Captain Hines's plan, and in order for General Morgan to do so it would be necessary to have him exchange cells with some one in the tier below. The plan of Captain Hines was communicated to General Morgan and the other officers that afternoon, and after being fully discussed, it was decided that not more than seven of those on the lower tier could escape, because the greater the number the greater would be the danger of discovery. We arranged to have the work begin in the cell of Captain Hines, and in order to prevent the usual daily inspection being made of it, he asked permission to thereafter sweep it himself. The permission was granted, and he kept it so scrupulously clean that after a few mornings no inspection was made of it. Work was therefore begun in his cell on the morning of November 4th. With two small table-knives, obtained from sick comrades in the hospital, Captain Hines cut through six inches of cement, removed six layers of brick, concealing them in his bed tick, and came to an air chamber six feet in height. The work was carried on under his cot.

"Having progressed thus far, Captain Hines now mounted guard at the door of his cell, while the work was carried on by the rest of us. He pretended to be deeply engrossed in study, but in reality he was watching every movement of the guards and keepers. If one approached, he gave us warning by a system of taps on the floor. One tap meant to stop work, two to proceed, and three to come out.

"We cut a tunnel at right angles from the air chamber through the foundation wall of the cell block five feet, through twelve feet of grouting to the outer wall of the east wing of the prison, then through this wall six feet in thickness, and then four feet up near the surface of the yard in an unfrequented place. Our tunnel completed, it only remained to make an entrance from the cell of each man who was to escape into the air chamber. This could only be done by working from the air chamber upward.

"To do this we must have something to measure with in order to locate the spots at which to make these holes. We secured a measuring line by involving the warden in a dispute about the length of the hall, Captain Hines abstracting it long enough, after the hall had been measured, to answer our purpose. The chamber being very dark, we obtained matches and candles from our sick comrades in the hospital.

"It was very essential to our purpose that we should have an accurate knowledge of the prison yard and the wall inclosing it, but the windows of the hall were too high to afford us a view. Fortunately the warden ordered the walls and ceiling of the hall to be swept, and a long ladder being brought for that purpose, I offered the warden a wager that I could go hand over hand to its top, rest for a moment, and then descend in the same way. He took me up, and having been famous all my life for feats of strength and agility, I readily won the bet. While resting at the top of the ladder I made a thorough survey of the yard. There was a double gate to the outer wall south of the wing in which we then were and almost at right angles from its eastern end. Of this double gate, the outer portal was solid as the wall itself, while the inner was of wooden uprights four inches apart. By means of this latter gate we might ascend to the top of the prison wall. For that purpose we made a rope of our bed ticking, and fastened it to a grappling iron made out of the poker of the hall stove.

"All our money had been taken by our captors, but we obtained a fresh supply from friends in the South, secreted in the cover of an old book sent through the mail. An old convict, who was often sent into the city on errands by the warden, procured us a newspaper, from which we learned that a train left for Cincinnati—whither we were bound—at 1.15 o'clock A.M. At midnight the guards made a round of the cells, and we determined to start at that hour. I was to descend into the air chamber and notify the others by a tap under the floor of each cell.

"The evening of November 27th being dark and cloudy, we determined to try our luck that night. When we were locked up for the night, General Morgan contrived to change places with his brother, who occupied one of the lower cells, and who greatly resembled him in face and form. Every man arranged the stool, with which each cell was supplied, in his bed to look like a sleeping man when the guard should thrust his lantern through the cell door a few minutes later.

"I had General Morgan's gold watch, and punctually at midnight I broke with my boot-heel the thin layer of cement which separated my cell from the air chamber, and passing along the latter gave a tap under the floor of each of the others, who soon joined me. We crawled through our tunnel, and, breaking the thin layer of earth which separated its end from the surface, we were soon in the prison yard. Over the wooden gate, which I had seen from the ladder, we threw our grappling iron, and by its bed-ticking rope drew ourselves up till we stood on the wing wall, whence we readily passed to the outside wall in full view of freedom.

"The top of the latter wall was so broad as to form a walkway for the guards, who were stationed there during the day, but who at night were placed inside the walls. This walkway was supplied with sentry boxes, and in one of these we divested ourselves of the garments we had soiled in passing through the tunnel, each man having provided for this by wearing two suits. With one of the knives used in tunnelling, General Morgan then cut the rope running along the wall to the warden's office bell. Fastening our grappling iron to the railing running along the edge of the wall, we descended to the ground outside, and were free once more, though at that very moment the prison guards were sitting around a fire not sixty yards away.

"We now separated, and in parties of two and three made our way to the railroad station, and took the train for Cincinnati. During the journey General Morgan sat beside a Federal major in full uniform, and was soon on the best of terms with him. Our route lay directly past the prison whence we had just come, and, as we whizzed by it, the Federal officer said to our leader:

"'That is where the rebel General Morgan is now imprisoned.'

"'Indeed,' said General Morgan; 'I hope they will always keep him as safely as they have him now.'

"At Dayton our train was delayed for over an hour, and this made it unsafe for us to go on to Cincinnati, as we had intended, because we should now be unable to reach the city until long after seven o'clock in the morning, and by that time our escape was certain to be discovered and telegraphed all over the country, and we should be watched for in every large city in which there was any possibility of our going. We therefore alighted from the train as it was passing through Ludlow Ferry, a suburb of the city, and we quickly ferried across the Ohio River into Kentucky. There we found many kind friends, who aided us with hospitality, money, concealment when necessary, horses, and arms. The adventures, the dangers, hardships, hairbreadth escapes from capture, and serious and laughable incidents through which each one of us passed in making our way back into the Confederate lines, would fill an immense volume. For the purposes of this article, it must suffice to say that ultimately we all succeeded in rejoining our comrades at the front, though one or two of our number were recaptured before they could do so, but they again succeeded in escaping.

"What transpired in Columbus after the discovery of our escape we did not learn until long afterward. Then we found that we had created one of the greatest—if not the very greatest—sensations of the war. Our escape had been effected in such a seemingly impossible manner, and was so absolutely without parallel in the history of prison escapes, that the people of the North refused to believe that it had been accomplished without collusion on the part of some of our keepers. It is no wonder that they thought so, for everything in connection with the affair happened so fortunately for us that it really seemed as if we must have had some assistance from some one within the prison. The way in which we obtained the line with which to measure for the holes in the cell floors, the way I obtained a view of the prison yard, the way in which General Morgan and his brother changed cells on the night of our escape, all of which I have detailed before, would certainly seem impossibilities without connivance. Then, when it is considered that the digging of the tunnel consumed over three weeks, and that the keepers were almost constantly passing over where it was going on, it seems incredible that they never became aware of it.

"Nevertheless, there was never any bribery even attempted. It seemed as though fate or Providence or some controlling power had decreed that we were to escape, and directed everything to that end. The only bribery was that practised upon the old convict I have mentioned, to induce him to bring us a newspaper, contrary to the warden's rules, that we might find out about the trains for Cincinnati, and the convict in question had not the slightest idea what we wanted it for. I believe Warden N. L. Merion was perfectly loyal to the Union."