Authors: Jennifer Chiaverini
“I don’t care how difficult it is as long as it’s soon. I’m to be transferred back to the officers’ quarters the day after tomorrow.”
Lizzie had not expected that. “Then it will have to be tomorrow. You may choose a single friend to accompany you, but no more.”
He nodded, his brow furrowing as he folded his arms and leaned closer. “What do I have to do?”
“You must pretend to be dead.”
“What?” He drew back, uncertain. “How?”
“Close your eyes and lie very, very still for a long time.” Lizzie paused before adding, “Also, I have bribed the orderly who will confirm your death, and that will go a long way toward convincing your jailers.”
Dr. McCullough inhaled deeply and raked his long, sturdy fingers through his hair, receding at the temples but otherwise thick and tangled. “All right. I can do that.”
“Tomorrow, noontime, after the physician has come and gone, you will expire,” Lizzie said in an undertone, glancing toward the door, which could open any moment. “Your friend will tell the orderly, who will listen to your heartbeat but declare you dead anyway. Choose a few inmates you trust to help your friend lay you out as a corpse, cover you with a blanket, and convey you to the dead house. There your companion will keep vigil, and you must lie as still as you can, scarcely breathing, until dusk.”
He nodded. “And then?”
“Some of your friends will distract the guards with a sham fight. As soon as the way is clear, you and your companion must leave the hospital and immediately proceed two blocks to the north and one block east. There, a young colored woman in a blue kerchief will be waiting. She will acknowledge you with a nod. Do not approach her, but rather follow her at a distance and she will lead you to a place of refuge, where you will be given shelter and food and instructions. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Dr. McCullough replied quietly, and they both jumped at the sound of a door slamming elsewhere in the hospital. “Thank you, Madam. Thank you.”
She nodded, gave him a quick smile, and hurried away.
All the next day her stomach knotted with anxiety as she imagined what Dr. McCullough and his friend were doing at that precise moment, if they were waiting eagerly in the morgue or if they had been discovered and beaten and flung into the worst corner of Libby. As the hours slowly passed, she organized their supplies—passes Mr. Ruth had procured for them that would allow them to exit the city, three thousand dollars Confederate apiece and worth every cent; suits fashioned from Confederate blankets, which they had learned made convincing disguises; and a small purse of silver dollars to ease their passage. Finally, just before dusk, Louisa tied on her blue kerchief, kissed Peter, and hurried off to meet the fugitives.
Less than an hour later, Louisa returned, and not two minutes behind her followed Dr. McCullough and a companion, whom Lizzie recognized as a prisoner employed as a steward in the prison hospital. Dr. McCullough seemed surprised to see Lizzie when she stepped out on the front portico to usher them quickly inside, and both men bore the strained, wary, excited expression she had seen on the faces of many fugitive prisoners before them.
As she led them upstairs to the secret chamber, Dr. McCullough introduced his companion as Captain Harry S. Howard of Cameron’s Brigade. “Thank you, Miss Van Lew,” Captain Howard enthused as she guided them into their hiding place. “From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”
“If this is how you feel now, just wait until you’ve had a good supper.” Leaving them to settle in, Lizzie went downstairs to help Caroline carry up their trays.
Once they had eaten, she explained the rest of the plan. They would remain with her three days to allow the hunt for them to run its course, but on the fourth evening, a Unionist friend would convey them in his wagon to Mr. Rowley’s farm on the outskirts of the city, where they would remain until it was safe to proceed. “Mr. Rowley will lead you through Confederate lines to the Potomac,” she said, “where you can make your way to Washington City. What do you say to that?”
“I say you are an angel of mercy,” Dr. McCullough replied.
“And I heartily concur,” Captain Howard chimed in.
She smiled as she gathered up their dishes, which had been cleaned of every last crumb. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
She left them to rest, enjoying their happiness, but guardedly. In their exhilarating first hours of freedom, she didn’t have the heart to remind them that they had many miles to go before they were safe in Union territory again, and that any mistake could land them back in prison.
All the next day they rested, and ate, and studied maps, and plied Lizzie with questions about the progress of the war and the fortifications around Richmond. Lizzie told them all she knew, which was considerable. Captain Howard promised to pass her information to the Union authorities. “The highest authorities,” he emphasized, giving her a knowing look.
“Mr. Lincoln himself?” Lizzie inquired.
“Perhaps not so high as that,” he admitted, and Lizzie laughed.
As twilight fell on the fourth day, the men prepared to depart. Mother packed them a haversack full of bread and cheese and assured them that she would pray for their safe deliverance.
Just as Lizzie heard Mr. McNiven’s bakery wagon pull up outside and she was preparing to bid her guests good-bye, inspiration struck. First she dashed to the library to retrieve a letter she had written several weeks before but had been unable to deliver. Then she ran outside to the rear gardens, where she quickly cut a lovely bouquet, tied it up with ribbon, and hurried back to the foyer. “Give this to General Butler if you can,” she said, handing the bouquet and letter to Dr. McCullough. “Offer him my sincere compliments and tell him I hope to welcome him to Richmond soon.”
Both men promised her they would, and with that, they slipped outside, concealed themselves aboard the wagon, and were gone.
A few days later, Louisa and Peter returned from a drive out to the countryside with a note from Mr. Rowley hidden within the hollow egg. The doctor and the captain had reached the Potomac safely, he reported, and when he saw them last they were waving to him from the deck of a steamer bound for Washington City.
Lizzie felt tears of joy spring into her eyes as she cast the note onto the fire. What glad tidings her loyal friend had given her, and just in time for Christmas! Her spirits soared when she imagined the two men celebrating the holidays within the loving circle of their families.
She only wished she knew for certain whether they had made it safely home.
Lizzie thought of them on that bitterly cold Christmas Day as she counted her own blessings. Though she was surrounded by danger and threatened every hour with betrayal, she had a sturdy roof over her head, enough to eat if only barely, trusted friends, loving family, and two precious nieces to distract her from her troubles with laughter and play. Perhaps this would be the last Christmas of the war, she allowed herself to hope. Perhaps the worst was behind them at last.
On New Year’s Eve, she received a sign—for that was how she decided to interpret it—that 1864 would be a year of danger as well as blessings.
Mr. Rowley had sent his son to deliver two unexpected gifts—a sack of potatoes and onions for the Van Lews’ New Year’s Day feast, and a newspaper, the December 25 edition of the
Boston Daily Advertiser
. He often sent her newspapers smuggled from the North, which she always read thoroughly, for even a few days old they were full of useful information. Intuition told her that Mr. Rowley believed this newspaper contained something of particular interest to her, and after scanning the page, she understood why.
“An Escape from Richmond,” the headline sang above an account of “two enterprising soldiers of the U. S. Army,” who on the afternoon of December 24 had “reported themselves at the Provost-Marshal’s office, dressed in gray clothes made by Union ladies at Richmond from secesh blankets. Their names are H. S. Howard, of Cameron’s brigade, and John R. McCullough, of the 1st Wisconsin infantry.” The two men asserted that they never would have escaped without “assistance from the Union people of Richmond (who are more numerous than is generally supposed).”
“Yes, we are,” Lizzie said aloud to the empty library as she folded the newspaper and tucked it away in her father’s desk drawer for safekeeping. They were more numerous, and together more powerful, than anyone imagined.
She wondered, briefly, if the doctor or the captain had delivered the bouquet and the note offering her services as his Richmond correspondent to General Butler. Probably not, she thought, regretful. Their paths would likely never cross the general’s, and the flowers were certainly long dead.
What mattered most was that Dr. McCullough and Captain Howard had successfully escaped—and that the Union underground had eluded detection another day.
“Standing upon that narrow isthmus of time which connects the two segments of the calendar, the Old and the New Year,” the Richmond
Examiner
solemnly wrote on the first day of 1864, “it is natural that we should pause to reflect; should cast a keen retrospective glance upon the troubled tide over which we have passed, and peer intently into the Cimmerian darkness which envelops our future path....What does the impenetrable face of 1864 conceal of good or of evil for us?”
Sometimes Lizzie wished she knew, but although her hopes for a Union victory increased with every successful prisoner escape, with every intelligence dispatch smuggled out of Richmond, she still dared not peer too deeply into the shadows that stretched before her.
The turning of the year brought to light the offenses of Captain Alexander, who had narrowly avoided punishment for the inhumane treatment of prisoners at Castle Thunder earlier that spring. Arrested, charged with malfeasance in office, and confined to his quarters, he stood accused of “extensive trade in greenbacks” and of accepting bribes from prisoners to ensure their release. General Winder agreed to an investigation of his conduct before a court of inquiry, but while the court-martial was pending, he relieved Captain Alexander of duty, his mind on more pressing matters than the tyrant of Castle Thunder.
At the general’s orders, construction had begun on a massive new prison compound of twenty-six acres outside the town of Andersonville, Georgia, where the climate was more benign and food more plentiful. Lizzie realized that she ought to be pleased to hear that many, though not most, of the Union captives would soon benefit from new, more spacious quarters and ample provisions, but she had serious misgivings about sending the men deeper into the South, from where it would be far more difficult, if not impossible, for them to escape to Union lines. She also knew that Andersonville might turn out to be far less comfortable and benevolent than General Winder promised, and from so great a distance, she would be powerless to help.
The men trapped within the dismal prisons preferred their own methods for relieving overcrowding.
One snowy evening, Lieutenant Ross appeared unexpectedly at her door, dressed in civilian clothes, feigning a limp, and completing his disguise with a cane. “Something’s in the works at Libby,” he told her, after she had shown him into the library and called for hot tea to help warm him. “It’s my job to count the roll twice a day. Recently, four or five men have been missing each time, although they’ve gotten away with it so far.”
Lizzie couldn’t help smiling. “Because you’ve deliberately miscounted?”
“No, because they’ve tricked me,” he admitted. “As I go down the line, some of the men I’ve already counted leave the front and sneak around to the end so I count them twice. This morning they decided to have some fun at my expense. The first time I counted, there were ten prisoners too many, so I had to start over. The second time through, there were six too few. The third time, there were twelve extra men. Even though I knew what they were doing, I got so annoyed that I exploded. Oh, they enjoyed that. I’ve never been laughed at so hard by so many.”
“You can’t blame the men for wanting to tease their despicable prison clerk.”
“No, I can’t, and I couldn’t then either. I burst out laughing too.”
“Oh, no!”
He nodded, rueful. “I immediately caught myself and screamed at them all the more for the rest of the day to make up for it. I think I left everyone at Libby none the wiser.”
Lizzie certainly hoped so. She would hate to lose him to Castle Thunder. Lieutenant Ross was a good, brave man, and because of his position, he would be impossible to replace.
Not long thereafter, Mr. Ford, the colored prisoner employed as a hostler for Libby’s commandant, confirmed Lieutenant Ross’s suspicions that the imprisoned officers were up to something. “There’s going to be a breakout,” he told her in an undertone, brushing a horse while she paused on the other side of the fence, pretending to shift the items in her heavy basket. “A mass escape, as many as can go. A group’s been tunneling for weeks. Colonel Rose of the Seventy-Seventh Pennsylvania is the ringleader.”
“How soon?”
“A few more weeks, a month—they won’t know until they break through to the surface someplace out of sight of the guards.” Mr. Ford fell silent as another inmate stablehand passed, and waited for him to disappear around the corner before continuing. “I’ve told them all the safe houses in the city. Tell everyone to make ready.”
Lizzie nodded her thanks and hurried on her way.
She spread the word to her Unionist friends, reminding them to be silent and watchful. The secret chamber in her attic would not suffice for a mass escape, so Lizzie and her mother hastily prepared more accommodations for whomever might come, choosing a little-used end room facing the back of the house, drawing the curtains tight, and nailing dark blankets over them so not a glimpse of light or movement could be discerned from outside. Nelson checked to make sure the gas was ready to be turned on at a moment’s notice, and Louisa helped Lizzie arrange cots and bedding, enough for ten men to wait out a search for a week or more in relative comfort. The newly prepared quarters were not invisibly concealed like the attic chamber, but the room was as secure as they could make it, and it would be ready to shelter the fugitives whenever their tunnel broke through to the surface beyond the prison gates.