Existing comment:
Life Inside Libby
Exposed to the elements, prisoners often went without furniture, blankets, and eating utensils. Throughout the war, they were plagued by overcrowding, disease, and hunger. By the winter of 1863, when the inmate population rose to 1,000, hunger and disease increased. Prisoners were supposed to receive the same rations as Confederate soldiers, but inflation and food shortages made that impossible.
Escape!
Using chisels and a wooden spittoon, a small group of officers dug a nearly sixty-foot-long tunnel to escape Libby Prison. The men fought against sickening air, cold, and darkness. Rats made tunneling especially harrowing, as they crawled over the prisoners in the pitch dark. On February 9, 1864, 109 men passed through the tunnel to freedom -- fifty-nine escaped, two drowned, and forty-eight were captured. |