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.
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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.