mp 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 ware