o. w., national p. o. w. mia recognition day. andersonville is the most infamous prison in american history. it was only open for around 14 months, february 1864 until the end of april of 1865 of the civil war. it was only open around 14 months, yet approximately 45,000 union prisoners came through here. roughly 13,000 union prisoners perished here. do the math. this makes it the worst and most infamous, notorious prison in american history. absolutely shocking. we're not talking about andersonville, but we're talking about another prison. not as bloody, but perhaps more important than andersonville politically to the civil war and to the future of this country after the war. first off, i don't know about all of you, but i love prison escape movies. i think we all do, right? i put some of my favorites up here. papillon, cool hand luke, great films, the shawshank redemption. the book and film, absolute instant classics. the count of monte cristo might be my favorite book and my favorite movie. a lot of great prison escape movies. there's something about being in prison and escaping which makes it irresistible. our story today is even more so because it is folks who were innocent. they escaped from a prison that was said to be escape proof. whenever they say a prison's escape proof, someone is going to escape from it. here are a few of the most famous person escapes in history. at the top of the screen, i wrote father gerard. his famous tower of london escape back in the late 1590s. he was a catholic priest. at the time, britain was going back and forth, as they so often did, between the protestants and the catholics. he was on the wrong side of protestant rule. he was a catholic. he was also very political, very vocal, very popular, very charismatic. he was arrested. he was put in the tower of london. he was in there for years. not only is he in the tower of london, but he was tortured. he was burnt. they broke his hands, one thing after another. he is so charismatic, however, that the guards fall under his spell. they appear that they helped him to escape. they get word out to his supporters and they string a rope down from of the tower and across the river. he escapes. before he escapes, he tells the guards, look, you need to escape with me, or they're going to think are complicit. that's the end of you. they escape with him. he eluded capture. napoleon's escape from elba. the emperor after the napoleonic wars in europe was captured and sent to an island, elba. only napoleon would be able to negotiate to be given an island rather than a prison for his imprisonment. what did he do at the island of elba? he basically reconstructs the island. he trains the locals, builds infrastructure, builds ports, builds roads, takes over the island, essentially. even has them build a port and build ships. after some time, he hopes on one of them and escapes. he returns to power, but after 100 days, he is defeated. he meets his waterloo. he is sent back to prison and exile. 100 days -- that's where we get the notion of 100 days because of napoleon's 100 days. on the left, i have a picture of john dillinger. he is arguably america's most notorious criminal. dillinger committed a host of crimes across the country. he is imprisoned in indiana. he manages to escape by making a fake gun and overpowered the guards. if you're the most wanted person in the country and you managed to escape, you lay low -- not dillinger. he went on a crime spree. he was eventually gunned down and killed. stalag luft iii, on the right part of the screen. this was the great movie the great escape which a lot of you have probably seen if you are movie buffs. it was a true story during nazi germany. 70 allied prisoners managed to dig three tunnels under the prison and escape. tragically, all but three of them were recaptured and killed. it's a large prison break, a legendary prison break. ours that we're going to talk about today was an even larger in prison break. long before the great escape, it was a similar type of escape. they would build a tunnel. the escape from alcatraz, the famous film based on a real story. the anglin brothers and frank morris, the three of them escaped from alcatraz, which was said to be escape proof. they managed to make some sort of a primitive raft and tunnel out. if anyone has been to alcatraz, it's in the middle of the bay around san francisco. the water is cold, rough, shark infested. they were never heard of again. did they make it or not? we still don't know. those are some great prison escapes from history. we're going to talk about prisons and prisoners of war in the civil war. first off, some of the vitals. the textbook number always given is that 620,000 americans perished in the civil war. that's a shocking number. recent scholarship, most civil war historians are pushing the number around 700,000. if anything this is a conservative estimate. it accounts for about 2% of the population. if you extrapolate that today, that would mean millions of people dying in a war today, just to give some comparative sense of that. single battles -- gettysburg, over 50,000 casualties in just three days in that small farming community in southern pennsylvania. over 50,000 casualties in just three days. for comparative purposes, three southern states and four union states -- alabama, north carolina, and virginia, as well as illinois, ohio, new york, and pennsylvania -- each of those states loses over 30,000 of its sons. each one lost over 30,000. that basically means every family, every town knew someone that was lost during the war. talk about it coming home in a powerful way. a number and a statistic i guess which doesn't make enough textbooks -- over 30,000 colored troops perished during the war. as was the case with virtually every war before it, including the american revolution, the war of 1812, the mexican american war. more men died from disease than died in combat. this was because of the primitive medicine at the time, the primitive state of medicine, and the prisons were just atrocious. i put some numbers up there just to show you the totals. the top line is the number that we lost in the civil war. the second line is world war ii. the third line is world war i. what you can see there is we lost more men in the civil war than we did in world war ii and world war i put together. for comparative purposes, the other lines are vietnam, korea, the mexican war, all the way down to the revolution, the war of 1812, the gulf war. we lost more men in the civil war than we did all those earlier wars put together by a factor of several. in fact, more men perished in prisons during the civil war than total in combat in all those other wars put together in the early wars in american history. the prisons were charnel houses. this is the famous photograph from here in andersonville. the prisons were charnel houses. over 400,000 soldiers were imprisoned during the civil war. that is a shocking number. over 400, 000, of which 56,000 died. those are numbers higher than our total casualties in korea, equal to vietnam. why was the prison death toll so high during the civil war? neither side was prepared for the civil war. therefore, they were not prepared for the number of prisoners they would get. both sides thought this thing would be over very quickly. prominent politicians in the north and south, newspapers said it would last about a month. the north said we have the advantage of the three ms--more men, money and, manufacturing. therefore, this thing will be over more quickly. the south said they had the advantage of better generals, which they did. therefore, this thing will be over quickly. even lincoln at one point had a 90-day draft assuming this war would be over by three months. neither side was prepared for it. therefore, they did not have trained wardens, trained prison guards, enough prisons, medicine, food, anything else they would need. of course, it starts initially after manassas if you're from the south, bull run if you're from the north. all of a sudden, hundreds than thousands of prisoners are coming and neither side was prepared for it. the numbers were just shockingly high. a higher number of northern prisoners died in southern prisons than southern prisoners died in northern prisons. in part, this was because of the south ran out of food, ran out of medicine, ranout of clothing. if you don't have enough food and medicine for your own troops and your own population, you sure as heck are not going to prioritize the prisoners. consequently, here at andersonville and elsewhere, many soldiers died from diarrhea and dysentery from a lack of health care, but also simply neglect and starvation, which were found in a number of prisons. here's an image of andersonville since we are here today. the image on top as well known to anyone who has read about the civil war, had a class in american history. it gives you a sense of how grotesquely overcrowded this place was. it started as a 16. 5 acre prison, built for a few thousand soldiers. they ended up having to expand it by several acres. 45,000 soldiers came through this, thousands at any one time. there was basically an arm's length of room per soldier, per prisoner. grotesque overcrowding. the bottom is the recreation, here on the grounds, of what this looked like. andersonville was not even a prison. a lot of southern prisons were not prisons. they were stockades. that is where you would put cows, perhaps, just a wooden wall. therefore, the prisoners were subject to the elements -- the heat, the cold, the rain, insects, vermin, and so forth. here is the prison we're going to talk about today. it was known as libby prison. the technical name was confederate prison number one. not very exciting. the prisoners called it the bastille of the confederacy. it was arguably the most high-profile prison in the entire confederacy. why the bastille of the confederacy? one, it was located in richmond, which was the capital of the confederacy. the first capital was montgomery, alabama. it was moved, very quickly, up to richmond. that made much more sense. richmond was bisected by several roads, several railways and an important river, the james river. it was the bastille. secondly, the south centralized its prisoner population. by that i mean this. any prisoner captured anywhere in the war was first brought to richmond and then brought to libby. from there, they would be sent to other prisons in the process. everyone walked through libby at one point or another. the prisoners also called it, the castle of despair, or just simply, rat hell, or just hell. why was it called libby? it had been owned by a fellow named george libby from maine. there was a sign hanging on the side of it. you can see the white horizontal sign in the middle of the prison there. it said libby and son. when the confederacy made it a prison they never took the sign down. everyone just called it libby. the tents around it, the tents for the guards, the guards do not want to stay inside or too close to the prison because of the smell of death, human feces and everything else. it was a grotesque smell from the prison. you can see that it is three warehouses connected, four stories tall on the water side, which is the backside. three stories tall on the land side. behind it is the james river. the james river runs 60 miles or so by williamsburgh. access to the chesapeake bay, which means the atlantic and so on. here is the water side of the prison. it was built in 1852 by a fellow named john enders. he wanted it to be a tobacco warehouse. the tobacco in virginia and north carolina and this area of richmond today is known as tobacco row. tobacco was a rich export. this would be warehouses for tobacco. it took enders years to finish it. right when he was finishing it, he fell off a ladder and fell to his death. these warehouses passed to the husband of his daughter. that man dies mysteriously and quickly. it passes to someone else who dies and someone else who dies. it gets the image of being cursed or haunted. no one wants to use this facility. it's cursed or haunted. they sold it to a fellow from maine, libby, george and luther. george and his son. they came down and they operated it as a chandlery. that's like a warehouse for ships. if you're a boat, you would pull up behind it and they have tar, sales, nail, woods, masts, whatever you need. it was like a warehouse for ships. luther and george operated it until the civil war started and then it was confiscated by the confederacy and they were put in prison. so, i mentioned earlier that it was the central receiving site for all prisons. here is actually one of the roads. here's one of the rooms. there will several rooms like this, about 100 feet by about 50 feet. a low ceiling, and as you notice, no bunks, no accommodations, no toilet, no nothing. it was just wide open warehouse space. the men slept on the floor, they slept on the hard floor. the windows were open, which meant when it rained or snowed it was cold, bugs came in. they dealt with the elements that particular way. it was so crowded that you would have 1000 men in a room. it was so crowded that the only way the men could sleep without being piled on top of one another -- there wasn't enough room to lie down. what they would do is, by companies, they would lie side by side by side, spooning like newlyweds. they would all spoon. it kept them warm in the winter. every hour, the commanding officer would yell, okay, company whatever, spoon left. they would roll over. an hour later, spoon again. it kept everyone warm. it allowed them to have space to lie down. they were down to skin and bones, literally skin and bones lying on a hard floor. by rolling over, it got the blood flowing. the guards would yell at every hour, 3:00 and all as well, 4:00 and all is well. after that the commanders would get up and yell spoon left, spoon right. that's the only way they could sleep. when you are processed at libby, a couple things happen. the trains, or wagons, or whatever brought you to richmond, they would bring you to the train station. you had to walk down the street, which was a gauntlet. the main street to get to libby -- local folks would line up on either side and throw garbage, feces, come up and sucker punch, hit someone with a piece of wood as the prisoners were walking down the street. there were yells to shoot everyone on site. it scared the you know what out of the prisoners. if you were a union soldier in 1862, you heard about libby. you knew that if you went to libby, if you are an officer, there was only one way out, which is horizontal in a box. libby had this reputation of the bogeyman, i guess you could say. sitting around a campfire at night you surely heard stories. imagine the fear walking down that street, knowing where you were going. when you got to libby, you saw skeletal faces looking out at you. some of the guards would say, look there, that's your future. you saw skeletal faces staring at you. when you arrived at libby, three things happened. you were robbed, you were not fed, and you were beaten. many men did not have boots. many men did not have a jacket. many were stripped down. you were freezing and you had no possessions. the south ran out of clothing. therefore, all around richmond, everyone wore blue union jackets. the first thing that was prized, jackets. second, boots. one of the things they thought was comical was if they had any blue they blended in because everyone at richmond wore blue because they were out of clothing, out of boots. i mean this with all due respect. i've written a book on the holocaust. there were all these gruesome sayings on certain concentration camps, like, work will set you free, right? it's sort of haunting. libby had a saying from dante's inferno. abandon all hope, ye who enter here. welcome to libby. it was a cursed prison. there were several things in libby that were alarming. one were the turner brothers. or turners, rather. they were not related, but they had the same name. the guy with the beard on the left is dick turner, a big bear of a man. the guy on the right is thomas turner, the opposite, a very, very, small frail fellow. dick turner was the assistant warden and he terrorized men because he was so physically powerful. thomas turner, the little guy, terrorized men because he was utterly devoid of any sense of humanity. he got his kicks out of seeing men dead. he would crush a man's skull, kick him in the head, things to that effect. i put some quotes up there from the union soldiers. many of them said that one of the few things kept them alive was dreaming of catching thomas turner alone one day because of what they were going to do to him. the wardens were quite brutal individuals. that's dick turner in the basement, the dungeon. underneath these three warehouses was a dungeon. there was solitary confinement down there. that's him standing at the cells. if you did anything wrong or even looked at one of the turners wrong, you were in solitary confinement in the dungeon. that might not sound too bad. the dungeon was filled with rats. there were so many rats that the prisoners said, because they don't have boots, as they tried to escape through the dungeon, it was impossible to walk through the dungeon without stepping on rats at every step. there were literally thousands of them. also, a sewage system ran by there, so there was often a couple inches of raw sewage. imagine the smell and the feces and how unhealthy it was to be in the dungeon. two things about libby that set it apart that i thought were the two most alarming aspects of this story. one is propaganda. all governments used propaganda, all cultures use propaganda. the confederate government used libby as propoganda. they basically encouraged the four newspapers in richmond, and other papers around the south, to publish and write about how many men died and how horrifying it was. they didn't try to hide it. they wanted to broadcast it. they thought as word got out, it would scare and therefore deter union officers from wanting to fight against them. it was used as propaganda. libby was reserved for high ranking officers. enlisted folks would go to one prison. if you're a major, a colonel, a general, you went to libby. by having all of these colonels and generals at libby, it gave the impression that the confederacy was winning the war. look at all of these generals and colonels that we have. they used it for propaganda, both externally to scare the you know what out of the union officers. and internally, to give southerners the impression that they were, in fact, winning the war. it was also nicknamed the libby zoo. they gave tours of the prison. prominent folks would walk through and they would say, oh there is colonel so-and-so from gettysburg. there's the famous general so-and-so from whichever battle. the prisoners felt completely dehumanized. they were disgusted that they were put like animals in the zoo. being laughed at and held there. how did the men stay alive? if you look at the picture i have there, it looks different than the first picture. one of the first things the confederates did, and the union did, to prevent people from escaping is that they would paint the bottom half of it white. that way, if you're walking along, your shadow stands out. anyway, these are some of the things the men did to try to stay alive. one was the lice-see-em. plato and aristotle created the academy and the lyceum, perhaps the first institution of higher learning in western civilization. they had their version of a lyceum, but because there were so many lice inside they called it the lice see em. because they were high ranking officers, there were university administrators and professors from harvard and elsewhere. there were playwrights. there were actors. there were composers all inside libby. they put on shows. they reenacted shakespeare. they had classes in german, latin greek, various languages. there were classes on theology, classes on everything in there. there were classes on the art of photographer, even though they didn't have cameras inside. they would explain it. the prisoners would amuse themselves by putting on classes and attending classes. the problem was they had to do it quietly. they sang in a whisper. they acted out plays but everybody had to lean in because if they were to loud, the guards would bayonet people or beat people. they produced their own newspaper, called the libby chronicle. if someone managed to steal some paper and put it inside they wrote really small. each man would get up and read a section of it. if you had news and nothing to write with or on, you would get up and talk about it. so they had a newspaper. a fellow named beaudry, a canadian then to maine, he was the editor of the newspaper. when he was exchanged in a prisoner exchange, all the men collected all the papers that he had released and they put them inside his undergarments and the guards didn't check it. he actually left with all the papers and later republished them. we can read today the news from inside libby. they put on holidays musicals, plays, classes. one of their favorite things was to prank the guards and passersby. they would run to the window and throw a rock or a brick or an old boot out the window and then hide back inside. they were bored. the way they pranked the guards was the guards had, at least, two roll calls every day. what they would do is when the guards would call out names, everyone would yell out present. the guards would have to start over again. if they did account, when the guard counted and they were about 347, everyone would yell, 326, 384, then the guards would get confused and would have to start over again. that meant you had to stand at attention longer and it often meant that you were beaten but it was worth it to the prisoners to prank the guards. the one thing they did if someone had a hat when they were doing a head count, someone would put the hat on their hand and hold it next to them. the guards were always over counting. that was the kind of things that they did to keep up their spirits. one thing that you find, including here at andersonville, is some men just literally gave up. perhaps understandably so. they gave up and waited to die. that was also the case inside libby. the other officers encouraged one another to participate in all of this to keep their hopes alive. so, the escape. we will talk about five folks. what was the plan? it starts with the two top names, colonel thas rose and major andrew g. hamilton. rose is from pennsylvania. he's a really big guy with a beard, a very big and powerful man. he grows up around philadelphia with the quaker community, which means he is an abolitionist. his family were educators. he's a teacher. he eventually moves away near pittsburgh to become a school principal. even though he's a teacher and a principal, rose is a man a few words. he joins at the lowest rank when the war starts because he feels so strongly about abolition. he rises up very quickly to be a colonel. his men loved rose. rose is one of those classic officers who led from the front. if they had a line and the confederacy was punching a hole in the line, he drew his sword and was the first to fill the line. he was at the head of the column. one of those officers who lead by example. the men loved him. he was a hero in multiple battles. rose was captured at the battle of chickamauga in the fall of 1863. he was taken by a train to richmond. it's raining and it's night. he jumps off the train. he's going to escape. he lands wrong and breaks a foot and ankle. he still manages to run on a broken foot and ankle. he eludes the confederate guards for hours until they catch him. they beat him to unconsciousness and put him back on the train. they arrive in richmond. they have to do with the gauntlet. they have to walk from the train station to the prison. the men are scared to death because they know where they are going. there are threats, there are calls to kill them. they are being hit and spit on. they said that out in front of them is rose. if someone spit on rose and threw something on him, he didn't even wipe it off. if someone hit him, he didn't even flinch. he just kept walking. they thought he had lost his mind. he just walking, i guess, we would say, today, robotically. what rose was doing was memorizing how many steps it was to the prison, memorizing the name of every street, memorizing were street lamps were, memorizing where guards were. he was putting a map of richmond in his head. he was going to escape. he was already planning it. when he arrived and he is stripped, robbed and beaten, rose doesn't complain, doesn't say a word. he's measuring up all of the guards to see who he can take and who he can't. rose is planning his escape from the beginning. major andrew hamilton was from kentucky. part of kentucky was pro-union, part was pro-confederate. a raid went through his community and confederate soldiers raided their own communities, so he flipped and joined the union. he was a cavalryman on horseback. hamilton is sort of like macgyver. i'm hoping everyone is old enough to know my reference to mcyver. he is really resourceful. when rose and hamilton are digging a tunnel, the problem is when they get so deep in the tunnel they can't see. hamilton is the one who steals matches and steals candles. the next problem is they can't keep the candle lit because they are so far underground. hamilton gets a wide brim hat that he steals. he sews it, puts wood in it, and makes it rigid so he can fan air into the tunnel. the problem then when you are digging, dirt and rock, you have to back out because the tunnel is too narrow to turn around, get rid of the rock and dirt and crawl back in. it's a waste of time. hamilton steals a spatoon and a knapsack, creates a pully. ties it to roses'ankle. rose pulls on it when it's full, hamilton takes it out, empties it. rose pulls it back in. rose can stay underground around the clock digging and digging and digging. rose passes out once from a lack of oxygen, so hamilton steals a clothesline, ties another line around roses ankle so he can pull him out if he collapses. hamilton is very resourceful. rose, one night, is ready to escape and the confederate guards had put scaffolding outside the window to repair a roof. the skies opened up. it's pouring, it's night, it's lightning, it's thunder. the guards ran inside to not get wet. rose realizes that he left the scaffolding up. they put bars in the window. rose goes over to the window. he sneaks over at night. he's big and strong enough that he might be able to break the bars. if so, he could jump out of the window onto the scaffolding, go down to the first floor, and then escape. while he is at the window trying the bars, he realizes he can't do it. lightning strikes and it illuminates his face and there is a face beside his. he and the other person gasp. it's hamilton. they shake hands, introduce one another, and they go back to their respective rooms. the next night, rose says, i need to get down into the dungeon. no one goes into the dungeon because of the rats and the sewage. if i can get into the dungeon, he thinks, i can dig a tunnel into the sewer and escape through the sewer. no one would think of that. i could fall down into the james river and break out. he watches rats by the thousands come in and out through the sewer. he goes down to the dungeon. there is a bolted door. he's big enough. he can bust the bolted door. he gets into the dungeon. he's walking, stepping on rats, through raw sewage, feeling his way along the wall. he bumps into someone. they both gasp. it's hamilton. they both run into each other, two consecutive nights. lightning strikes twice. that's when they say they're going to escape together. the next night, they go down into the dungeon and the guards realize the door had been broken. it has multiple dead bolts on it. they have to find a way to get out. what they realize is in the mess, where the eat, there is a couple big cauldrons, big black cauldrons, huge, where they make stew for everyone. behind that there's a fireplace which hasn't been used. they go down to the kitchen at night. rose literally moves these giant cauldrons. hamilton steals a jackknife and digs out the mortar around the bricks in the back of the fireplace. they cut through the fireplace. that's their tunnel to the dungeon. each night, they have to remove brick by brick by brick and come back up in the morning and put brick by brick by brick and put the mortar between them. rose has to push the cauldron back in place. there's a couple other folks who lped them. one is colonel abel streight. streight was a union writer, sort of like jon hunt morgan, if anyone knows who that is. a legendary confederate raid. he would attack supply areas, train stations, railways, the confederates hated streight. they caught him. he was a very high-profile person, he was in the dungeon in solitary. they had to confide in him because he could see what they were doing. he helped them to escape. colonel frederik bartleson had lost an arm and continued to fight. he couldn't climb down into the dungeon and help dig. he was a poet. he wrote poetry and wrote lovely letters to all the prisoners wives, daughters mothers, girlfriends and helped everyone to deal with it through his poetry. cavada was from cuba. he was so livid with the idea of slavery that he saw it as similar to what the spanish government was doing to the cuban people, so he joined and fought for the union. he was a balloon spy i guess you could say, he would float over the battlefield in a balloon and use flags or hand signals or sketch it. he will take you to the officer. he would sketch the layout of the battlefield until the command where the confederates were. in gettysburg, when his balloon lands, he is captured. he's taken there and beaten severely. he cannot escape. he's too weak. he is brilliant. he's an engineer. he helps to designed the escape. those are what rose called his silent partners. what i did after reading multiple diaries, everything i could for a year, i went through and try to find an image of a title that i thought looked the most like what they described and this is it. it's about the height and width of it, just wide enough for a man to go through. rose was so big he often got stuck. his shoulders were always raw. rock and dirt, this is what they dug through. there were several other challenges they had. i told you about the kitchen fireplace. they had to dig it brick-by-brick. they had us the sewer cave in. one day, rose is digging in the tunnel. hamilton is outside. rose says he is getting close. all of a sudden, the sewer collapses and rose almost drowns in raw sewage. absolutely horrendous. they had an unexpected roll call one night. i put the name up there, captain isaac johnston. rose and hamilton realized the winter of 1863 to 1864 was bitterly cold. there was a starvation atmosphere across the south. they knew that they were going to die. it wasn't if it was when. therefore, if they don't get this tunnel built quickly, they are all going to die. what they do to make it quicker, they bring a couple of other men in to help them dig. one was johnston. if they have hands digging around the clock, they get out earlier. johnson is down in the tunnel. there are four other men in the dungeon. a man comes running in and says they are starting the roll call. the other man go running up to their barracks, i guess you could say. johnston can't get out of the tunnel in time. as he's getting out of the tunnel, confederate guards come walking in. he is trapped in the dungeon. there is a huge pile of straw in the dungeon that they use for the beading's for the guards. as rose and hamilton used to say, it seems the only purpose of the straw now was for all the rats to bed under. johnston dives into the pile of straw. there are hundreds and hundreds of rats all over him. the straw tickles his nose. he's going to sneeze. you can't hold back a sneeze. a confederate guard is walking around with a lantern. they put bayonets on the end of their muskets. he's holding back the sneeze. he makes a muffled sneeze. they start stabbing into the pile of straw. the bayonets are going all around him. they don't hit him. the door opens up and they come in with a guard dog, a bloodhound. the dog races right to the pile of straw. johnston is ready to come out with his hands up. rats run out. the dog barks and chases the rats. the guards say, darn rats, and they leave. johnston is okay, but here's the problem. he wasn't at the roll call. rose and hamilton lied and said he escaped. johnston couldn't come back up the next day or they would know something was going on. he has still live in the dungeon and sewage with rats. they get a little bit of food and water every day. they have to save enough food and water to sneak down at night so now two men our short. it's not enough to keep on man alive. i estimated that each man was getting about two thirds of the caloric intact needed to live. it's a slow death. two men with not enough food for two men are sharing it with a third man. they were often put in solitary. they had something called a lottery of death or the libby lottery. turner, the commandant, would get six colonels and say, draw six straws. whoever gets the short one, bang. it's a form of terror. you never knew when your name was going to be called. those were some of the challenges that they had. the one thing that they did have to help them was this woman, crazy bette. elizabeth van lew there was a union spy enrichment, the confederate capital, who had infiltrated all aspects of the confederate government. the confederacy spent the duration of the war trying to find out who on earth was the spy. it turned out to be a woman. elizabeth van lew. i love crazy bette. she was tough. her family was from philadelphia -- quakers so she was an abolitionist, as quakers were. her father moved to richmond. that's her mansion on the right. if anyone has been up on the hill, this is where the home was. what she does is buy slaves and then frees them. they called her crazy because she believed in women's equality. she opposed slavery. she was an older woman who never married. she use that to her advantage. in the genteel south back in the 1800s, no one would expect a woman to be a spy. what she would do is she would go into the prison with fresh baked foods and everyone, even the guards are starving. she would offer the guards food. she had enough money that she would get food delivered. she said, i will give you food if you let me give some to the prisoners. the guards said sure because they were starving. she hid notes inside hollowed out eggs. she had secret compartments under pots and pans where she hid notes. she also -- general benjamin butler and ulysses grant sent her a codex. she knew how to code using a codex. she was the intelligence, the eyes and ears for the union in richmond. she was the one who told the prisoners how to escape, went to escape, and so on and so forth. she had a room upstairs in her house where she would hide prisoners and she would put them in a wagon, cover them with straw and produce, and one of the former slaves would ride them to freedom. if they were slapped on the way it would give out the produce, but no one would look under the straw. this is an artists depiction of the place where she had prisoners on the left. on the right is her attic were a bunch of prisoners had. she saved countless lives. this is -- i'm running a little short on time. this is the path they took. basically, hamilton steals a jackknife, part of a broken shovel, a small tray, a little bit of rope, a spade and they use all of that to dig the tunnel. eventually, they get 3 5 man crews digging around the clock. they dug a 53 foot tunnel. it's actually significantly longer than 53 feet because it goes side by side up and down to go around rocks or--. they tunnel out over a series of 38 days and three attempts. they finally tunnel out. the day of the escape is february 9th, 1864. 1864 is the last full year of the civil war. by february, it was freezing and the prison had run out of food. turner announced that no one eats. the prisoners knew they were going to die. rose says it is time to leave. they race, two days before this. they dug all the way out and turned and went upward. now, they are going to break out. rose punches through the crisp, cold night. he feels the cold air russian. there's dirt in his eyes. he rubs. he put his head up. there is a boot of a guard beside his head. they tunneled up on this side, the wrong side of the fence. they were just a few feet shy. there's a guard there. rose freezes. when he hears the guard yell to another guard, he pops down in. the guards come and they stab with bayonets. they cut his face. he can't make a peep. the guards eventually say it must have been a rat digging another hole. it's cold. the guards leave and go inside. rose takes off part of a boot. he had like half of an old boot. he puts it up top, fills up the hole, goes back in. he tells them that we came up on the wrong side of the fence. the next day, he peeks out the window to see where the boot was so he knew how many feet he had to dig the next night. on february 9th, they break ground on the opposite side. 109 men went racing to freedom. rose announced to them that the underground railroad to god's country is open. the men vote that they are going to go in teams of two and they all vote rose and hamilton are the first two. it was rose's idea. he did all of the digging. hamilton was his partner. they are the first two to pop up and run after two by two by two, they run. colonel abel streight the writer was a very large man. he got stuck in the tunnel at winnie the pooh. they were pulling up from the front and stripping up. they finally squeezed him through the tunnel. he was so weak that he couldn't run. they took him to the house of crazy bette. he hid upstairs. he eventually escapes to freedom. it is like an action movie. some are captured. some make it. some live. some die. they follow the james river 60-some miles to williamsburg. the union had taken over williamsburg. crazy bette told him to go to williamsburg. hamilton is the first to arrive in williamsburg. he runs for about a week. he hides by day, runs by night. he and rose get separated. they turn a corner and there are several confederate guards. hamilton runs. rose talks to the guards. who was that yankee? you need to go get him. rose talked his way out of it but they are separated. hamilton makes it there. he's the one who warns the union. they are on their way. there are over hundred men on their way. the union is sending men out on horseback to look for the prisoners. hamilton makes it through this ordeal. rose runs for a week on a broken foot and ankle. at one point, he's almost captured. he jumps into a pond, holding his breath. at another point he jumps into a hollowed out log. it's a long couple hundred yard open field. he is hiding in the woods. you can see the smoke from the campfire in williamsburg. he can smell the bacon. he can hear the voices. there is an open field. he knows the confederate has guards. they can race back to richmond and save him. he's looking for the confederate guards. after hours, he is starving and dying. he stays put for hours. he hunkers down low and races across the field. he gets halfway across the field and in the tall grass, five confederate guards hop on him. he gets into a fight with them. he beats the heck out of some of them. one of them busts him over the head with the butt of the gun and knocks him out. they pummel him and beat him. they take him back to libby. rose, after all that, the man who came up with everything to escape, is caught. turner put him in solitary confinement. over the next few days, 100 men are running. you can see here, 59 managed to escape, making this still largest prison break in american history. right after the prison break, hamilton said that if there is a prison break like this he's going to kill everyone in the prison. he had slaves build a trench around the prison. they filled it with explosions. turner was going to die. the union decided they would have what they called a kill cavalry. it was named after the guy on the top left, the incompetent general johnson kilpatrick. he knew nothing about anything. he is going to race into the cavalry union. they are pulling horses behind that. they are going to russian and liberate libby. they're going to put the prisoners on the other horses and race back out. he is so slow getting there that the confederates have eyes and ears everywhere. they are waiting for him. they annihilated the confederacy and the cavalry. i -- colonel all rick dull green, a european. he's a dashing, tall, handsome european aristocrat. he's kind of a minor celebrity. the confederates kill him by dragging him behind horses up and down the street. then they hang him upside down, in richmond. he had a prosthetic leg, he lost the leg in the war but kept fighting. that kind of guy. they hang his leg up, they hang him up. people would come by and spit on him, throw things at him as a public dehumanization -- the next day they go out to continue to desecrate the corpse. they can't find it, it's gone. his leg is going. crazy bette came down and cut it down and hit him. return the body to family. richmond falls in early fall of 1865 the war is basically over. the confederates are retreating, jefferson davis burns the wonderful city of richmond. lincoln wants to visit richmond. he wants to meet with the confederate leaders to negotiate peace, but they are all gone. lincoln wants to visit jeff davies's office in the confederate white house, which is still there. lincoln has a big entourage. people follow him up and down the streets. how careless. he could've been killed, easily. that's his young son, taddy. he goes to jeff davis's office. he sits in his chair, he can't resist saying, oh, this is an awfully little chair for a man. he also goes and visits, what? libby, he wants to see libby. it was so infamous. the crowd gathered they all knew the story. we will chair down we will tear down lincoln yells, no. leave it as a monument. the preservation by the national park service and andersonville today is just extraordinary. we need these places to be a monument so we know the horrors of war. lincoln visits libby. what happens at the end? here is the five men i talked about. the big rly guy on the left, that is rose. rose is put back in solitary confinement, beaten yet again. rose, somehow, lived through all of this. he is one of those people that you just can't kill. stays in uniform, becomes a general. states and entire career in the military service and lives along life. the men begged rose to write a memoir about his remarkable heroism. he is so humble, he won't do it. they finally wear him down, but he just writes the other men were great. i managed to escape. the other men that escaped with him were so angry with him for being so humble, that prompted them to all write their accounts, which also survived. there are multiple, multiple, primary sources. the handsome guy in the top right. a bit like a musketeer with the handsome mustache. that is hamilton. one of the first two escaped. he goes back to kentucky. it is tough for him after the war. kentucky's dicey. there is pro union, pro confederacy. there are uprisings. one guy after going back, hamilton and some other veterans go to a pub. they sit outside of the night saturday night to enjoy a couple drinks with some other veterans. a couple young hooligans come up and they see hamilton and they shoot and kill him, after the war. he survived all that and was killed after the war. the guy with the hat on his knee sitting in the chair, that is able streight, the famous raider who got stuck in the tunnel. they take him to crazy bets house. after the confederate stop looking for the runways. they put him in a wagon. cover him with food and straw, he escapes. he is the one that tells the main story. he briefs lincoln, grant, so on and so forth. the guy on the lower left, you can see he has one arm. that is frederick bartleson. he lost an arm, continued to fight. he was a scholar and a poet. the poetry he wrote kept men inspired, on behalf of the families, women and children and everything -- it keeps the men inspired. he's leading the man in the final closing hours of the war he is shot and killed. when the other men heard about it they were deeply disturbed about it. the guy on the lower right, who also looks a bit like a musketeer, that is cavada. the cuban, he fought. as other men around the world who were horrid against the bondage of human slavery. he goes back to cuba, he becomes the leader of the cuban revolution. dashing fellow. i went on a tour in cuba few years ago. cavada hospital, cavada street, cavada square. he is almost a george washington type of figure in cuba, fighting against the spanish imperialist. he is friendly with grant. benjamin butler and all of these folks like roads -- cavada is going to travel, quietly, by boat all the way to philadelphia. he gets funds and weaponry to bring back for the cuban revolution. somebody leaks chabad of capture. the spanish government imprison him and torture him. all the way up to the ulysses grant, people wrote to spain asking to please release this great man. they tortured and killed him. gelotte it is not make it through that. when we -- close a few quick things. here is one of bartleson and -- we have bartleson'ms poems today here is one about the guards yelling every hour. is it so my fellow captive, sleeping -- where the barred window strictest watches keeping, dreaming of home and wife and piling child -- of the sequestered veil, the mountain wild -- tommy, when cruel mourn she'll break again, will that repeat the sentinels refrain, all is well. bartleson's poetry survive. what happened to libby? even though lincoln said leave the, they tore down. a group of chicago investors body. they loaded up, brick-by-brick. put it on a train, to go to chicago. the train derails, sending thousands of bricks, canons, and everything all over. they loaded up, it takes forever. they don't rebuild libby. they build into a castle in chicago. talk about historically not very accurate. it becomes the great libby prison war museum. it is the disney world of the late 1800s. everybody goes. veterans are always there. everyone knew about libby. cannons, uniforms, everything. the first major civil war museum. unfortunately it falls on hard times and it closes. the owners of it just tell people to take everything with you. people walked out with bricks, can, and uniforms, hats. where is libby prison today? part of a barn in indiana, part of a house in iowa. there's a brick in a museum in ohio. there's a break in richmond. it is gone. here's the inside of the museum. you can see remnants of libby. the wood, the bricks, the cannons, everything was taken. all we have today is a photo. this is what is left of libby. go to richmond, as i have many times. i love the city of richmond. go to tobacco row, 20th street. that is where libby sat. today there is a huge storm wall to keep the james rumor from overflowing. it is about the height of this room, maybe 12 feet high. there is a cut in the wall right where libby sat. people jogging, walking the dogs, the cut through the cut. out of curiosity of gone there many times. and everyone that goes by i ask, have you ever heard of libby? no one ever said yes. do you know what used to be here? no one knew. do you know what is under the ground here? nobody knew. there is a sign, i took this picture. it's a little bigger than a license plate. that is the remnants of libby. what is poetic is the ground that was libby is now a parking lot and a building. years ago somebody bought the ground and built a building. guess what's on the site now? the virginia holocaust museum. how entirely appropriate, consecrating and haloing this ground is another memorial to another horrible event in history. i went over and told the board of the virginia holocaust museum, guess what is under the ground. no one knew! no one had heard of it. we've lost libby. here is the key from libby, one of the barred windows. this is in a virginia museum of history and culture enrichment. great museum! barred windows are about four feet high. there's a key. there is a handful of items in richmond. there is a memorial to lincoln. that it's his young son, taddy. who visited the site with him. they have a quote from lincoln's second inaugural event, right before his death. there are two paintings of libby that are quite famous. it's a beautiful painting, the problem, of course, is it's completely inaccurate. the men wearing their uniforms. happy, hanging out, well said. plenty of room and a high ceiling. make them half naked, on the floor, dying and piled up on top one another. this is not a very accurate painting. our last slide. this is another painting. i like this one more because it has that old testament feel to it, doesn't it? you can feel the sense of it being a bit haunted. some men are half clothed. various stages of dying on the ground. it is dark. the only thing i don't like about it is it's not nearly crowded enough and it has an extremely high ceiling. we get a false to picking of it. i will end by saying -- and shameless plug my book. proceeds goes to my kids tuition. war brings out the best in us, and the worst enough, doesn't it? and the civil war -- in particular libby in places like andersonville i think are especially poignant. there are lessons here. every culture, every country, every period in history, we have mistreated each other in the most inhumane ways. every war has the most unspeakable stories of what we do to prisoners. god bless anyone who has been a prisoner. civil war, places like libby and andersonville, -- it was brother against brother. can, countrymen, doing this to win another. i think there are lessons we have yet to learn. places like andersonville, would be. with that, thank you. any questions? >> i have a question. >> yeah, sure. >> how many prisoners left libby and came to andersonville? >> yes, we don't have an exact count. libby was open until the very end of the war. ironically, dick turner, the deputy warden, big guy with the beard. he was captured and put in libby. talk about poetic justice. andersonville was mostly for enlisted man. libby was major, colonel -- a few of them were taken. andersonville was planned january 1864 until the end of the war while the confederacy was running out of prison space. they started moving people out of richmond. some of them were sent there, some of them did live. what makes libby interesting was, there's always men that die in prison, and men that live. because these were high ranking officers, they were well educated, literary, they wrote their accounts. i have found so many accounts. i can say what they ate on a particular tuesday. everything is documented! another advantage to this is a lot of the man from andersonville were so weak that when the war ended they died weeks later. they were -- on a lot of them were marginally literate, while they did write account. you can read them here in this margin -- it's not like publishers publish some half literate farmers account who survived. but the generals from libby, they published these accounts. some were moved. prisoners from all around the region we moved from andersonville. it was still far away from anything, out in the middle of nowhere. good question. a lot of men died. we don't have an exact count. thomas turner, the warden, when the war ended he destroyed the papers. we have newspaper accounts, hundreds of newspaper accounts. dozens and dozens of books by prisoners in there. plenty in primary source information. but thomas turner destroyed the war records. we don't know exactly how many died. i would guess probably around a thousand. that's extrapolating based on the number of people the said parished. thomas tierney goes on a run. he is never captured. he joins jubile early, one of lee tougher generals. used to call him a battle axe. they raced to texas. they crossed new mexico. thomas turner says, i will never live in the united states if the union is governing. he hates mexico. he goes to cuba, hates that. he got canada, he hates that. europe, he hates everywhere! finally president johnson, after lincoln, starts pardoning senior confederates. he comes back, moved to tennessee and lives that is life in tennessee. under a pseudonym. former soldiers, prisoners, they were always looking for him. he dies peacefully in tennessee. we do not have the details of how many died here because he destroyed all the records. perhaps 1000. over four years -- >> so, those known are buried in richmond? >> yes. so, shockoe cemetery -- a cemetery in richmond where a lot of the prisoners were buried. a lot like andersonville, mass graves. some of the former officials and prisoners had records of who were in there. they found those records. a lot of these were senior union officers, the families were fluent. members of congress, newspaper editors. they moved heaven and earth to get these bodies and bring them back. the shockoe, various named cemetaries around libby they also contain hundreds of thousands of slaves. we don't know there are bodies buried under what was libby which is now a holocaust museum. they were told they had to make the caskets they suggested they put a marker on the casket that same marker kept coming back the guards were dumping the bodies out in a deep hole or next to the prison to be picked over by vultures and dogs. mass burial. pretty darn gruesome. the room where they kept the caskets and bodies, they called it the dead room. one man escape from the dead room. he was so weak. they tied him and threw him on top of a bunch of dead bodies, corpses. when the guards went to bed that night, he got up and walked out of. he was still alive. he was so weak they felt that he was dead. all sorts of the amazing stories of survival. it is hard for us in this day in age of excess, and comfort to imagine the grit that northern and southern soldiers had to have to survive the ordeal. >> the guards were pardoned at the end? >> yes. lincoln wanted magnanimity. if you go to the appomattox courthouse for the surrender. grant, his oldest son, joshua chamberlain and others. lincoln gave the orders, tell grant to take his sword and firearm and just go home. lincoln, lee rather. told lee to take his horse, sidearm, just go home. grant, lincoln did not want to see lee dragged through the streets and chains. go home. lee became president of a college. lee then told his fellow southerners, surrender. it is over. most senior confederates were pardoned. turner, the commandant, would have been tried if they had caught him. as commandant of andersonville here was tried and hanged. -- the warden was put in libby, they pardon him and let him go. they pardoned the guards and let them go. lincoln wanted to not just win the war but win peace. reconstruction, one country, you know? lincoln even said both sides drew the sword, we were both guilty. let us work together. again some of the former prisoners, they spent years later trying to find the whereabouts of thomas turner. i think some of them would've killed him if they caught him because of what he did. -- >> where was robert e. lee from, i forget. >> virginia. he was a virginian. west point grad. that remains a point that scholars discussed today. lee was a great soldier. a hero in the mexican american war. an absolute hero in the mexican american war. the battle of chepultepec, to take today what is mexico city. lee being a west point grad and, an officer, a gentleman, why did he joined the confederacy? lee considered himself a virginian, first and foremost. one thing we need to remember, take a time machine and go back to 1776, meet thomas to friesen and ask him about his country, he would say, virginia. that's one way of looking at a grant and much respect for lee so did lincoln. the one they didn't like with jefferson davis. who was said to have been more cold blooded than a reptile. davis was a monstrous human being. it's hard to say anything good about the guy. lincoln once said if davis wants to run away and flee the country, i won't stop him. davis dresses in disguise as a woman and gets caught. that was a embarrassing comeuppance for him. he though, eventually, would be pardoned as well. andrew johnson around 1868, he pardons about everyone. then they come back. >> was vmi called vmi back in the day? >> sure was. one of the greatest generals in american history, stonewall jackson, was one of the -- the cadets of vmi fought bravely, impressively, at more than one battle. they were taken out of class i guess you can call it a practicum or a lab, to fight. stonewall jackson races there for the battle of manassas, in the north you call it bull run. arguably one of the greatest generals, shot and killed by one of his own men--lee and others also bemoan the loss of the great stonewall. during the latter part of the war when the union, under general david hunter, they called him black david hunter. for his deeds, kind of a derogatory phrase. hunter burns vmi, the confederacy is livid. vmi held almost a west point aura back then. still there today. >> still called vmi. virginia military institute. i went to virginia tech. i visited vmi. we played football. occasionally we would play them they don't really anymore. -- good. everybody, i would like to thank you for attending. enjoy the rest of your day in andersonville. let's all remember, today, national p. ond mia recognition day. thank you. >> weekends on c-span two are an intellectual feast. every saturday, american history tv documents america story. on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span two comes from these television companies and more, including buckeye broadband. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> buckeye broadband, along with these television companies, supports c-span 2 as a public service. >> if you're enjoying american history tv, sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on screen to receive a weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures in history, the presidency, and more. sign up for the american history tv newsletter today and be sure to watch american history tv 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