The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1908-08-29
BE LED THEM FROM LIBBY.

Drigadier general, retired, who die
10 Washington on Dec. 18th last, le,
the party of Union soldiers who du,
their way out of Libby prison durin,
the civil war, says the New Yori
Evenimg Post.
General Rose was captured in th,
battle of Chickamauga. He escaped
al Weldon, N. c., was retaken the
next day and sent to Libby prison or
October Ist, 1868.
The forlorn conditions at Libby
Prison in 1868 are we'll known. The
building itself was an old ships chan
dhry warehouse, embracing nine
latge rooms, into which were crowded
I,eoo prisoners. Quarters were so
crlmped that the inmates had to
skep spoon fashion," head to head
and feet to feet in squads. There
onlys few of the early comers possess
ed such luxuries as old army blankets
or knives, cups or tin plates. As
rule the prisoner by the time he
reached Libby found himself deprived
of all these accoutrements.
Outside the prison to the south was
canal. In wet weather the cellar of
the prison would become flooded with
water and platoons of hoary rats
emerged from its ancient walls on the
surface of thetide. The easternmost
cellar was the worst and was known
as Rats hell.
From the first day of his incarcera-
tion Roses mind turned to thoughts
of escape, and all through the course of
the partly successful plot he was the
engineer and captain. He found
loyal lieutenant in Major A. G. Ham
ilton of the Twelfth Kentuckey cav
airy, and together the two men decided
that the most feasible plan was to dig
a tunnel from Rats hell eastward, a
distance of about seventy feet, to an
empty shed abutting on building
owned by the James River Towing
Company. The exterior of the prison
was carefully guarded night and day
by sentinels, but indoors the vigilance
was somewhat relaxed at night. At
one time more than 400 prisoners were
in the secret of the work, all under
oath, but by some miracle the Confed-
crates did not discover what was on
foot.
Work was begun with a broken
shovel and two case knives. With
infinite pains the men cut through
stone walls and piling in various
places only to find themselves frus-
trated, now by water from the canal,
now by some impossible obstacle.
They tried to avail themselves of old
sewers, but one was too small and one
debouched in too public spot. Fin
ally they adopted the plan of digging
eastward to the shelter of the other
building.
IuwxIS IN auu1rIUu ~ uIInSeII anu
Hamilton. Most of tha others had
been discouraged by the slime, the
foul air and the i'll success of previous
attempts. Rose and his little band
went on indefatigably, scarcely eat
ing, scarcely sleeping, engrossed in
the one feverish thought of liberty.
AT best it would be slender chance.
The streets Richmond were patrolled
by southern pickets, and friends were
few for escaped Yankees wearing pris-
on stained blue uniforms. But hope,
springing persistently, drove them on.
By great good fortune Rose had
come into possession of rope nearly
a hundred feet long, an inch thick
and new. BY an agreement between
the commissioners of exchange sever
al bales of clothing had been sent by
the Federal government to the suffer-
ing soldiers at Belle Isle. A COM
mitttee of Union officers from Libby
prison had been assigned to supervise
the distribution, and one of them by
a bit of clever legerdemain managed
to secrete the rope which bound one
of the bales. Rose and Hamilton
fashioned it into ladder.
They concluded that the safest
means of getting into Rats hell with
ont detection would be to dig secret
passage from the kitchen, which was
on the floor above, but not directly
over Rats hell. Carefully digging
out the mortar with a jackknife, they
removed the bricks one by one from
back of the large open fireplace.
When morning came they replaced
the bricks and filled the crevices with
SCOT which they had taken the precau-
ton to collect beforehand on blan-
ket. After several nights work they
had an S shaped passage down which
they could descend to Rats hell by
means of their rope ladder.
The wall of that east cellar had to
be broken in three places before a
place was found where the earth
would support a tunnel. Rose dug
assiduously, while Hamilton famed
air In to him and dragged the excava-
ted material out as fast as 1t was
ready. Without the artificial venti-
lation the tallow dip by which Rose
worked would have gone cut and Rose
would suffocate. A wooden BIO x
which had been used as spittoou
served very we'll to draw the earth
out of the passageway, part OF the
precious rope having been attached to
it to enable the outside worker tC
pull it out and in turn the digger tc
pull it in. AS fast as the earth was
taken out it was hidden under deel
layer of filthy hay which covered th'
floor of the damp cellar.
The average diameter of the tunne
was about two feet. AS the work
progressed it was pushed with greater
haste. Usually one man would dig
and fill the spittoon with earth, at
given signal second would draw th'
spittoon out, third man would keel
the air moving by tanning it with
rubber blanket, a fourth would &C
as relief, while a fifth would keel
.,,ard As there were fifteen in tn