Authors: Jennifer Chiaverini
After several thwarted attempts, including a near drowning when a tunnel flooded, Colonel Rose broke through to the surface behind a board fence on the other side of a vacant lot adjacent to the prison. The ringleaders had planned a stealthy, orderly egress on the night of February 9, but as word of the tunnel spread throughout the prison, more men desperately clamored to join the escape party. After Colonel Rose’s original group slipped out, a mad stampede for the tunnel ensued and continued through the night until just before dawn, when those who remained behind replaced the stones to disguise the opening of the tunnel and crept back to their quarters.
At roll call on the morning of February 10, the inmates slipped in and out of the counting lines to confound the guards, whose counts kept coming up short by varying amounts. Only when the prisoners were accounted for by name did the baffled and horrified prison officials realize that one hundred and nine men were missing.
Unaware of the tunnel, Major Turner assumed the sentinels on watch that night had been bribed—a misapprehension the remaining prisoners encouraged with false reports—and immediately placed them under arrest and confined them in Castle Thunder. Couriers were sent in all directions to raise the alarm, and as Lizzie and Peter had observed, the number of pickets posted on the roads and bridges leading to the Peninsula had been doubled. In the meantime, a careful inspection of the prison had uncovered the entrance to the tunnel, and when Major Turner sent a small colored boy in to explore, guards, officials, and prisoners craning their necks at the windows looked on in astonishment as he soon popped out of the ground, grinning, in an open patch of land between two buildings on the other side of the fence.
The Confederates acted swiftly to recapture the Union fugitives before they could reach the embraces of Butler the Beast. One officer was spotted within the city by a newsboy, whose shouts alerted rebel soldiers, who promptly apprehended the poor man. Another fugitive was captured crossing a field outside the city by a hoe-wielding slave whose misguided loyalty compelled him to march the unfortunate man to his master’s farmhouse, where a Confederate patrol soon collected him. Within a few days, fifty-two prisoners were caught and returned to Libby, including, tragically, Colonel Rose himself, who was captured within sight of Union pickets. These unfortunate men were given heroes’ welcomes by their fellow inmates upon their return to prison, which Lizzie hoped would lessen the sting of their disappointment and blunt the pain of Major Turner’s wrath. Furious and humiliated, he ordered the men clapped in irons in narrow and loathsome basement cells and placed on bread and water rations.
To Lizzie’s horror, Major Turner inflicted the worst of his vengeance upon Mr. Ford, whom he suspected of complicity in the escape although he had no proof. The commandant ordered Mr. Ford whipped nearly to death, five hundred lashes, which he bravely bore without admitting his role or betraying a single member of the Union underground in whose homes the fugitives had sought refuge. As soon as Lizzie heard of Mr. Ford’s sufferings, she used General Winder’s pass to visit him in the prison hospital, where she offered him what comfort she could, changing his dressings and feeding him soothing broths. “You have earned your own escape,” she murmured, tears in her eyes as she tended him. As soon as he regained his strength, and as soon as the means could be found, she would do everything in her power to spirit him away to the North.
In the days that followed, shocked, disbelieving citizens came to Libby in droves to view with their own eyes the tunnel, which was placed on exhibition and titled the “Great Yankee Wonder.” Newspaper reporters gloated over the arrests of particular officers, such as Colonel Rose, and lamented the loss of others, especially the notorious Colonel Streight, whose recapture they coveted more avidly than any other prisoner’s. Rumors abounded that many of the escapees had not yet fled to the North but were concealed in private homes throughout the city, biding their time until the search for them would be abandoned. Suspected Unionists came under increased scrutiny, and one morning Lizzie stepped out upon her front portico to discover a pair of uniformed guards watching her home. She expected them to demand admittance so they could search the mansion from cellar to attic, but although the Van Lews spent several anxious days waiting, the guards did nothing more obtrusive than watch the house and take note of their visitors.
As Lizzie privately rejoiced for every fugitive who avoided recapture and lamented each one returned to prison, she noted well the effect the mass escape had on the people of Richmond, prison keepers and civilians alike, and concluded that it was wrong to evaluate the success of the breakout solely upon the number of men who managed to reach Union lines. Until the events of early February disabused them of the notion, no one—including Lizzie herself—had believed that an escape from Libby Prison on such a grand scale was even remotely possible. The Confederate capital was greatly upset by the failure of its prison to retain its prisoners, and their confidence was badly shaken, in sharp contrast to the immense satisfaction and soaring morale of the prisoners who remained behind. Their machinations had kept the escape secret until the last possible moment, so that more than twelve hours had elapsed before the Confederates realized that a massive jailbreak had occurred. Lizzie was certain that those precious hours had made all the difference to the men who remained free.
In the weeks after the breakout, the angry and embarrassed guards at Libby Prison lashed out at their Union captives, reducing their rations, pawing through their meager stores, arbitrarily confiscating their few possessions, and subjecting them to constant scrutiny and invective.
On Belle Isle, every day the suffering prisoners slipped closer to death. Tentatively at first, but with increasing boldness, Lizzie asked to be allowed to visit the soldiers there, and to take them a few comforts, food and blankets and clothing. Near the end of February, the authorities finally relented and agreed that she and a single companion could tour the perimeter of the outdoor stockade under strict surveillance.
Lizzie first asked Eliza to accompany her, but her friend blanched and begged off. “I could not bear it,” she said. “The rumors of that harrowing place are enough to give me nightmares. Forgive me, but I haven’t the courage.”
“I understand,” Lizzie assured her, smiling sympathetically and patting her hand, although Eliza’s refusal dismayed her. “Few of the boldest men at the highest levels of army and government have toured Belle Isle. If they cannot look upon what they themselves have wrought, how could I expect my most tenderhearted friend to do so?”
John volunteered to escort her, though he had never visited Libby or Castle Thunder or any of the hospital wards. Lizzie had observed dreadful scenes of suffering in prisons and hospitals before, but Belle Isle surpassed in wretchedness and squalid filth her most grim and vivid imaginings. Long lines of forsaken, despairing, hopeless-looking beings gazed upon Lizzie, John, and their stone-faced military escort with gaunt hunger staring from their sunken eyes. The wind whipped her shawl into her face as she took in the crowds packed onto the frozen patch of bare earth, the wretched, smoky, tattered tents, the men lying on the ground, some without a scrap of a blanket over or under them, some picking vermin off their legs, some slowly and methodically searching their clothing for more, all within a few steps of the newly made graves of their late companions. Their despair was tangible, and Lizzie had to fight back sobs and resist the urge to cover her eyes and beg her escort to lead them away from that place of horrors. Instead she and John distributed their gifts—hopelessly inadequate to the overwhelming need—and she felt her heart break when the men could barely summon up the strength to accept them. When she had nothing left to offer them, when even words failed her, she clung to John’s arm and asked the guard to take them back across the bridge to the city.
As they left the island behind, she felt the prisoners’ weary, longing, dying eyes upon her back, and she could no longer hold back her tears. John put his arm around her but could find no words of comfort. She did not care what the guard thought of her grief but rather wondered, angrily, how he could refrain from weeping himself, to witness such suffering day after day and to know he was complicit in it. Soon there would be nothing of Richmond’s humanity left to save.
“Oh, day of deliverance,” she murmured, “will you never come?”
The Union had to make another raid upon Richmond, and this time, it could not fail.
Word came to Lizzie from her sources in the North of a scheme proposed by Brigadier General H. Judson Kilpatrick and endorsed by President Lincoln himself. The general—who had earned the nickname “Kill-Cavalry” for his bravery and recklessness—would thrust at the north of the Confederate capital with three thousand troops, and Colonel Ulric Dahlgren would split away with nearly five hundred men to cross the James above Richmond. Colonel Dahlgren—twenty-one, handsome, and headstrong—would sweep downstream on the south side to free the prisoners on Belle Isle, while General Kilpatrick would plunge into the city to liberate Libby and the other prisons. With thousands of freed Union men joining their forces, they would set fire to the city and capture Confederate leaders.
When Lizzie, Mr. Rowley, and Mr. McNiven discussed the scant details of the campaign that had been divulged to the Richmond underground, the two men concurred that the attack, expected to come in the first few days of March, was bold but risky, for the two commands would be unable to communicate until they reached the city perimeter. Lizzie had stronger misgivings; she doubted that the weak, emaciated, unarmed prisoners, once freed, would be in any condition to join the attack in the numbers General Kilpatrick expected. Even so, Lizzie took reassurance from the reputations and accomplishments of the two commanders. In May of 1863, General Kilpatrick had led the most destructive column of Stoneman’s raiders during the Battle of Chancellorsville, destroying valuable Confederate depots, bridges, warehouses, and other resources on the outskirts of Richmond, which eminently qualified him to lead a similar, though more audacious, sortie on the city. Colonel Dahlgren, the son of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, cut an even more dashing figure. Despite his youth, he had already earned acclaim for bravery, valor, and strong leadership; although he had lost a leg at Gettysburg, as soon as he could sit a horse, he had donned a prosthetic and resumed his command.
The Union underground did not know precisely when the attack would come or where, but they made ready as best they could. Through Robert Ford, who was still recovering from his terrible beating, Lizzie informed the officers held in Libby that the raid was imminent, and Mr. Ford reported back that they were organizing into companies to fight under the command of whoever liberated them. Lizzie also sent a warning, though she could not identify her source: Lieutenant Ross had learned that Major Turner had planted kegs of gunpowder in the basement, enough to blow up the prison and all its inhabitants, which he had vowed to do before letting it fall to Yankee invaders.
Their first indication that the raid had begun were rumors that Union cavalry had crossed the Rapidan River beyond the west flank of General Lee’s army—a distraction, Lizzie surmised, if indeed it was truly happening—and reports that telegraph lines into the city had been cut. The second sign was unmistakable: Terrified countryfolk sought refuge in the city, with tales of Yankee marauders rampaging close behind. The alarm bell on Capitol Square pealed, summoning the home guard to defend the city—a poorly trained mass of underage boys, aged men, and clerks, as well as officers on furlough. John reluctantly donned his uniform and reported to Camp Lee, sent off with tearful hugs and kisses from his daughters, mother, and sister. But Lizzie’s apprehensions were not for John alone. If General Kilpatrick’s plan had depended upon the element of surprise, it had already been lost.
On the first day of March, an oppressive, heavy silence hung over the capital. The home defense brigade was organized into five battalions and sent to the battlefront, while the women and infirm left behind to wait and worry rolled bandages and prepared for another onslaught of wounded and prisoners, if not an invading army. Curiosity compelled Lizzie to drive out in the afternoon, and at Camp Lee she found the militia drilling. Although she did not see John among the men, she spotted others she knew to be Unionists. She wondered if fear of invasion had roused them to join the defenders, or if like John they had used up all their exemptions. She felt the ponderous dread as strongly as any citizen of Richmond, but for different reasons; she passionately wanted the Union troops to sweep into the city, but she knew what General Kilpatrick and Colonel Dahlgren could not—that the rebels were prepared to defend their city fiercely.
Later that day, artillery fire boomed about a mile outside the city. Windows rattled and china clattered in the cupboards, and Lizzie paced and listened and waited. All the sounds of battle came from the north, which suggested that General Kilpatrick’s forces were in place, but where was Colonel Dahlgren?
Then the sounds of battle diminished. “No,” murmured Lizzie, racing up the stairs and outside to the rooftop. The raid had to succeed. They had endured three years of bitter, bloody war and daily life under a hostile regime. The prisoners on Belle Isle would surely perish if they were not liberated soon. “No, no, no.” Shivering in the wind, she shielded her eyes from the whirling snow with her hands and peered off to the north, but she saw nothing—no smoke, no rebel troops hastily retreating back into the city. The view to the south was equally ordinary. “No,” she said again, letting her hands fall to her sides. They were not coming. Hours of daylight remained. The fighting would not have stopped unless one side had forced the other into retreat or had utterly vanquished them, and if the Union had triumphed, she would soon glimpse signs of their swift march upon Richmond.