opening was carefully filled with dirt and shored up. The work was then
recommenced, and after digging about fifteen feet further the objective
point under the shed was successfully reached.

This tunnel required about thirty days of patient, tedious and dangerous
labor. It was eight feet below the street, between sixty and seventy
feet in length, and barely large enough for a full-grown person to crawl
through, by pulling and pushing himself along with his hands and feet.
Among the officers entitled to merit in the execution of this work, Col.
T. E. Rose, of Pennsylvania, deserves particular mention.

When all was complete, the company was organized into two parties; the
first under the charge of Major McDonald, of Ohio, and the second was
placed under my direction. The parties having provided themselves with
citizens' clothing, which had at different times been sent to the
prison by friends in the North, and having filled their pockets with
bread and dried meat from their boxes, commenced to escape about seven
P. M., on the 9th of February, 1864; Major McDonald's party leaving
first. In order to distract the attention of the guard, a dancing party
with music was extemporized in the same room. As each one had to pass
out in the immediate presence of these Confederate soldiers, when he
stepped into the street from the outside of the line, and as the guard
were under orders to fire upon a prisoner escaping, without even calling
upon him to halt, the first men who descended to the tunnel wore that
quiet gloom so often seen in the army before going into battle. It was a
living drama; dancing in one part of the room, dark shadows disappearing
through the chimney in another part, and the same shadows re-appearing
upon the opposite walk, and the sentinel at his post, with a voice that
rang out upon the evening air, announcing: "Eight o'clock, Post No.
One," and "All is well!" and at the same time a Yankee soldier was
passing in his front, and a line of Yankee soldiers were crawling under
his feet. The passage was so small that the process of departure was
necessarily slow; a few inches of progress only being made at each
effort, and to facilitate locomotion outside garments were taken off and
pushed forward.

By this time the proceedings had become known to the whole prison, and
as the first men emerged upon the street, and quietly walked away, seen
by hundreds of their fellows, who crowded the windows, a wild
excitement an