EXTRAORDINARY ESCAPE FROM THE LIBBY PRISON - ONE HUNDRED
OFFICERS HOMEWARD BOUND. – At roll call at the Libby prison yesterday morning,
one hundred and nine of the officers imprisoned there were found missing.
Further inquiry elicited the fact that they were not in the building; but the
mode of their disappearance was, of course, an entire mystery to the remaining
thousand or more of their fellow-officers in the same building. A strict
examination of the premises, however, revealed the manner of escape, and
disclosed a combination of ingenuity and enterprise highly creditable to Yankee
character. The prisoners being confined in an apartment on the second floor from
the Cary street front of the building, and the third from the Dock street front,
it would naturally be supposed that an exit was impossible without attracting
the notice of the exterior guard; while any movement to descend from within, it
is equally reasonable to suppose, would be discovered by the guards who are, or
ought to be, stationed within the prison. The descent from within was the method
chosen by the escaping party, and that they encountered no difficulties in their
way, seems to leave the inference that no guards were within hearing distance of
their immediate route. They had managed, it seems, to cut, in a very neat and
noiseless way, a square aperture in the floor in the eastern section of the
building, through which they obtained access to the floor below, into a part of
the building formerly used for hospital purposes. In the floor of this apartment
they cut a similar aperture, and gained entrance into the basement store-room, a
spacious apartment, but little used, and under the line of Cary and 20th
streets, which embrace the north-eastern angle of the building. Here they
commenced a mining process, penetrating the east wall of the building, and
striking into mother earth, under 20th street, and the sentinels upon
it, directly across into an old foundation in the lot adjoining the opposite
factory building – The tunnel thus formed was about three feet in diameter and
fifty feet in length. The earth displaced was scattered or hidden about their
“base of operations” – the store-room – This work, it is evident, must have
occupied weeks of patient and energetic labor – a labor which was at last
crowned with at least partial success. – Why more than one hundred and nine, out
of the twelve hundred, did not avail themselves of the opportunity to get free,
does not appear, and it can only be attributed to the sudden appearance or
manifestation of danger – by what signal or in what shape is equally mysterious.
It is sufficient to know, that through these traps, and cut by this tunnel, one
hundred and nine succeeded in making their way unobserved, and disappeared from
the adjoining lot into the darkness undetected. The number comprehends eleven
colonels, seven majors, thirty-seven captains, and fifty-nine lieutenants,
including the somewhat famous, or rather infamous, Col. A. D. Streight, of the
20th
Indiana cavalry, captured with his command, about a year ago, by Forrest in
Northern Georgia.
Upon the discovery of the escape, measures were immediately
set on foot to overtake the fugitives, but it is feared that they have gotten
rather too much the start of their pursuers to admit anything like the recapture
of them all. Four of them, however, were recaptured at an early hour of the day
– two captains and two lieutenants – a few miles below the city. It is supposed
that the direction taken by them all – if, indeed, all have left the city – was
towards the Peninsula; but it is not unlikely they have scattered in various
directions, as a self-sacrificing means of securing at least the escape of a
part of their number. The regime of the Libby guard has hitherto been
considered admirable, and the occurrence of such an extraordinary escape as this
comes with stunning effect upon the public. We presume the whole affair will
undergo a strict examination. Until then it would be premature to say where the
fault lies.
