Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War Civil War POWs Libby Prison 20221103

Technology, empowering opportunity, and communicating with communities big and small. Charter is connecting us. Charter communications along with these Companies Support cspan two as a public service. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is kaitlan edwards. Im the league park ranger here at Andersonville National Historic Site. Welcome. I have the distinct pleasure of introducing our presenter today. He is the distinguished professor of history, a researcher of us are at Lynn University in florida. He has published over 40 books, several of which have won awards. The latest of which is an escape about libby prison in richmond, virginia which we will be talking about today. Please welcome dr. Robert watson. Thank you, caitlyn. Thank you to Andersonville National Historic Site end the National Prisoners of war museum. Thank you, caitlyn and gia, charles, the entire stuff. Today september 16th, which is national p. O. W. Mia recognition day. It is recognized and was established by congress as the third friday and september to honor those who served, sacrificed, suffered, as well as those that have not yet come home. It is fitting, i suppose, altogether proper that we are here at andersonville to talk about one of the worst prisons in history on p. 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. Were not talking about andersonville, for 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 dont 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 poppy on, cool hand luke, great film, the shawshank redemption. Instant classics. The count of monte cristo might be my Favorite Book and my favorite movie. A lot of great prison escape movies. Theres something about being in prison and escaping which makes it irresistible. Our story today is even more so because it is focused on folks who were innocent. They escaped from a prison that was said to be escape roof. Whatever they say a persons escape roof, 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 59 is. He was a catholic priest. At the time, written 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 theyre going to think are complicit. Thats the end of you. They escape with him. He eluded capture. Napoleons escape from alba the emperor after the napoleonic wars in europe was captured and sent to an island, elba. All in 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 reconstruct the island. He trains the locals, build infrastructure, build ports, builds roads, takes over the island, essentially. Even has them build a port and build shifts. After some time, he helps 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. 108 thats where we get the notion of 100 days because of napoleons 100 days. On the left, i have a picture of john dillinger. He is arguably americas most notorious criminal. Dillinger committed a host of crimes across the country. He is in prison in indiana. He manages to escape by making a fait gone and overpower in the guards. If youre 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. The stella glove three this was the great movie of the great escape which a lot of people have probably seen if you are movie buffs. It was a true story during naughty germany. 70 allied prisoners managed to dig three titles under the person and escape. Tragically, all but three of them were recaptured and killed. Its a large prison break, a legendary prison break. The one were going to talk about today wasnt 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 angle and brothers escaped from alcatraz, which was said to be escape proof. They managed to make some sort of a primitive raft and total out. If anyone has been to alcatraz, its 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 dont know. Those are some great prison escape from history. Were going to talk about president s and prisoners of war in the civil war. First of, some of the vitals the textbook number always given is that 16 to 20,000 americans perished in the civil war. Thats 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 died, 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 for 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 doesnt 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 permit of medicine at the time, department of state of medicine, and the persons 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 or. 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 charles 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 presented 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 atoms 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 90day 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 from the south, will run 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 number of northern prisoners died in southern prisons than southern prisoners died in northern prisons. In part, this was because of the south right out of food, ran out of madison, right out of clothing. If you dont 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. Heres 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 arms length 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 stop aids. That is where he 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 person were 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 highprofile person in the entire confederacy. Why the bastille of the confederacy . One, it was located enrichment, 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. Unimportant river, the james river. It was the bastille. Secondly, the south centralized its prisoner population. I mean this by that. Any person or captured anywhere in the war was first brought to richmond and then brought to libby. From their, they would be sent out of the prisons and processed. Everyone walked through libby at one point or another. The first nurse called it the castle of despair or simply rattle or. Why was it called libby . It had been owned by a fellow named Georges Libby from maine. There was a sign hanging on the side of it. You can see the white horizontal side in the middle of the person there. It said libby inside. The confederacy made it a prison. They never took the signed out. Everyone just called it libby. The tents around it, the tense for the guards, the guards do not want to stay inside or too close to the prison because of the smell of death and everything else. It was a grotesque smell from of the prison. You can see that it is three warehouses connected, four stories tall, three stories tall on the landslide. Behind it is the james river. 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 and years. 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 in the image of being coerced or haunted. No one wants to use this facility. Its cursed or haunted. They sold it to a fellow from maine, libby, jordan eleuthera. It is george and his son. They came down and they operated it as a chandler e. Thats like a warehouse for ships. If youre 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 persons. Here is actually one of the roads. Heres one of the rooms. There will settle rooms like this, about 100 feet by about 50 feet. A low ceiling, and as you notice, no banks, 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 the room. It was so crowded that the only way the men could sleep without being piled on top of each other there wasnt enough room to lay down. What they would do is they would lie side by side by side spooning lake 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 flow in. The guards would yell at every hour, 3 00 and all as well, 4 00 and all is well. Spoon left, spoon right. Thats the only way they could sleep. When you are processed at lidia, couple things happen. The trains or wagon 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, 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 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. Let had this reputation of the bogeyman, i guess you could say. Sitting around a campfire at night, imagine the fear walking down that street, knowing where you were going. When you got to libby, you saw skeletal faces working out at you. Some of the guards would say, look there, thats your future. You saw skeletal faces staring at you. Three things happened when you got there 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 are 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 first second, boots. One of the things the person or 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. Ive written a book on of the holocaust. There were all these gruesome sayings on certain concentration camps, like work will set you free, right . Its sort of haunting. Libby had a saying from dantes inferno. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. It was a cursed prison. There will several things that let me that were alarming. What were the turner brothers. They were not related, but they had the same name. The guy with the beard on the left is tim turner, a vague bear of a man. The guy on the right is thomas starter, the opposite, a very, very, small frail fellow. He terrorized man because he was so physically powerful. Thomas turner, the little guy, terrorized man because he was utterly devoid of any sense if humanity. He got his kicks out of seeing landed. He would crush a mans skull, kick him in the head, things of that effect. I put some quotes up there from the Union Soldiers. Many of them said that one of the few things keeping 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. Thats the basement, the dungeon. Underneath the three warehouses was a dungeon. There was solitary confinement on their. Thats him standing out of the cell. 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 routes that the person are said as they try 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 their, so there was often a couple inches of russell which. Imagine the smell and the feces and how and healthy it was to be in the dungeon. Two things about louis that cited a part that i thought were the two most alarming aspects of this one is propaganda. All governments used propaganda, all cultures use propaganda. The confederate government usually basically encouraged for newspapers enrichment and other papers around the south to publish and write about how many people died and how horrifying it was. They didnt try to hide it. They wanted to broadcasted. 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. Levy was reserved for high ranking officers. They listed folks would go to one person. If youre 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 kernels that we have. They used it for propaganda both externally to scare the you know what out of the Union Officers and two it was also nicknamed the ladies you. They gave tours of the prison. Prominent folks would walk through and they would say oh there is colonel soandso from gettysburg. Theres the famous general tso and so from whichever battle. The person whos felt completely dehumanized. They were disgusted that they were put like animals in the zoo by 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 to confederate state and the union did to prevent people from escaping is that they would paint the bottom half of it white. That way, if youre walking along, your shadow stands out. Anyway, these are some of the things demanded to try to stay alive. One is the lycia. 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 lights inside 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 a theology, classes on everything in their. There were classes on the art of photographer even though they didnt 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 saying in a whisper. They acted out plays because if they were to load, the guards would be people. They produced their own a newspaper called the libby chronicle. If someone managed to steal some paper, they brought it inside and wrote really small. Each man would get up and read a section of it. If you have news and nothing to write with are on, you would get up and talk about it. They had a newspaper. A fellow named vogue, a canadian in 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 didnt check it. He actually left with all the papers and later republish them. We can read today the news from inside a lady. They put on holidays musicals, plays. 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 booed out the window and then hide back inside. They were bored. The way prompted 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 president. 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 who had 84, on the guards would get confused and everyone would have to that man you had to stand at attention longer and it meant that you were beaten but it was worth it to the prisoners to park the guards. The one thing they did if someone had a hat, someone would put the hat on their hand and hold a next to them. The guys 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 summoned 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 thomas rose and major Andrew Hamilton. Rose is from pennsylvania. Hes a really big guy with a beard, a very big and powerful man. He grows up around philadelphia with a quaker community, which means he is an abolitionist. His family were educators. Hes a teacher. He eventually moves away near pittsburgh to become a school principal. Even though hes a teacher and a principal hes 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 in the confederacy or 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 and 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. Its raining and its not. He jumps off the train. Hes 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 enrichment. 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 is 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 roads and threw something on him he didnt even wipe it off. If someone hit him, he didnt flinch. He just kept walking. They thought he had lost his mind. He was walking 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 were 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, rob, and been, he doesnt complain, doesnt say a word. Hes measuring up all of the guards to see who he can take and who he cant. Rose is planning his escape through the beginning. Major Andrew Hamilton was from kentucky, part of kentucky that was prounion. A raid went through his community and confederate soldiers raided their own communities, so he flipped and joined the union. He was a cavalrymen on horseback. Hamilton is sort of like mcgovern. Im hoping everyone is old enough to know my reference. He is really resourceful. When it rose and hamilton are digging a tunnel, the problem is when they get so deep in the tunnel they cant see. Hamilton is the one who steals mattress and steals candles. The next problem is they cant keep the candle lit because they are so far underground. Hamilton gets a wide brim hat that he steals. He sows it, puts wood in it, and makes it rigid so he can fan air into the tunnel. The problem than when you are digging is that dirt and rock you have to back out because the tunnel is too narrow to turn around. Its a waste of time. Hamilton creates a bully and ties it to his ankle. He emphases it and rose pulls it back in. Rose can stay 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. Row is one night is ready to escape and the confederate guards output scaffolding outside the window to repair a roof. The skies opened up. Rose realizes that he left the scaffolding up. They put bars in the window. Rose goes over to the window. He sneaks over and i. Hes big and Strong Enough that he might be able to break the bars. If so, he could jump out of the window of the scaffolding, go down to the first floor, and then escape. While he is out the window trying the bars, he realizes he cant do it. Lightning strikes and it illuminates his face and there is a face beside his. He and the other person gasp. Its 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 routes and the sewage. If i can get into the dungeon, he thinks, i can to title into the sewer and escape through the sewer. No one would think of that. I could fall down into the james river and meet on. He watches were asked by the thousands come in and out through the sewer. He goes down to the dungeon. There is a bold adore. Hes big enough. He can bust the bolted or. He gets into the dungeon. Hes walking stepping on routes through also its, feeling his way along the wall. He bumps into someone. They both gas. Its hamilton. They both went into each other two consecutive nights. Lightning strikes twice. Thats when they say theyre 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 mass where the eat there is a couple big cauldrons, big black cauldrons, huge, where they make stew for everyone. Behind the act, theres a fireplace which hasnt been used. They go down to the kitchen at night. Rose literally moves in 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. Thats their title to the dungeon. Each night, they have to remove brickbybrick by brick and come back up in the morning and put brickbybrick by brick and put the mortar between them. Rose has to push the cauldron back in place. Theres a couple other folks who helped 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 raider. He would attack supply areas, train stations, railways, so the confederates hated streight. They caught him. He was a very highprofile person or he was. Into 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 continue to fight. He couldnt climb down into the downturn 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 a 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. Hes taken there and been severely. He cannot escape. Hes too weak. He is brilliant. Hes 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. Its 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. 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 brickbybrick. They had us the sewer cave in. One day, rose is digging into the tunnel. Hamilton is outside. Rose says he is getting close. All of a sudden, the sewer collapses and rose almost rounds 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 wasnt if it was one. Therefore, if they dont get this tunnel built quickly, they are all going to die. What they do to make it quicker if 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 the system starting the roll call. The other man go running up to their barracks, i guess you could say. Johnston cant get out of the tunnel in time. As hes getting out of the title, 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 beadings for the guards. As rose and hamilton used to say, it seems the only purpose of the straw now was for all the 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. Hes going to sneeze. You cant hold back a sneeze. A confederate guard is Walking Around with a lantern. They put bayonets on the end of their muskets. Hes holding back the sneeze. He makes a muffled sneeze. They start stabbing into the pile of straw. The bayonet are going all around him. They dont hit him. The door opens up and they come in with a guard dog, ill bloodhound. The dog races right to the pile of straw. Johnston is ready to come out with his hands up. Routes run out. The dog barks and chases the rats. The guards say, routes, and they leave. Johnston is okay, but heres the problem. He wasnt at the roll call. Rose and hamilton allied and said he escaped. Johnston couldnt 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 to men our short. Its not enough to keep on man alive. I estimated that eastman was getting about two thirds of the caloric and achy needed to live. Its 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. Ne bang as aturner, the commandant, woud get six kernels and say, draw six straws. Whoever gets the short one, bang. Its 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 bet. Elizabeth van drew 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. 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. Thats 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 freeze them. They called her crazy because she believed in womens equality. She opposed slavery. She 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 deal issue would go into the prison with fresh baked foods and everyone, even the guards were 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 shore because they were starving. She hid notes inside hollowed out eggs. She had secret compartments under pots and pans where she had notes. She also general benjamin button and Ulysses Grant sent her a kotex. She knew how to code using a code ex. She was the eyes and ears. 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 im 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 today to the tunnel. Eventually, they get 35 man crew sticking around the clock. They dug a 53 foot tunnel. Its actually significantly longer than 53 feet because it goes side by side up and down to go around rocks or theories. They tunnel out over a series of 38 days and three attempts. It 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 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. Theres 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. Theres 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 cant make a peep. The guards eventually say it must have been a rat digging another hole. Its called. 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 whole, goes back in. He tells them that we came up on the wrong side of the fence. The next day, he picks 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 bro ground on the opposite side. 109 men went racing to freedom. Rose announced to them that the underground railroad to gods 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 to. 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 winning the pew. They were pulling up from the front and stripping up. They finally squeezed him through the tunnel. He was so weak that he couldnt run. They took him to the house of crazy bette. He eventually escape to freedom. It is like an action movie. Some are captured. Some make it. Some live. Some die. They follow the james river 60 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. It 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. Hes 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, hes almost captured. He jumps into a pot holding his breath, he jumps into a hollowed out log. Its 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 there is an open field. He knows the confederate of guards. They can race back to richmond and save him. Hes looking for the confederate guards. After hours, he is starving and dying. He stays put four 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 out of some of them. One of them busts him over the head with the butt of the gun and knocks it off. They pummel him and beat him. They take him back to libby. Rose, after all that, the man who came up with everything i let you escape, turner put him in solitary confinement. Over the next few days, 100 men are running. You can see 59 man are 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 hes going to kill everyone in the prison. He had slaves build a trench around the prison. They filled it with exclusive. Everyone was going to. Lighted 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 kill patrick. 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. Theyre 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. Hes a dashing, tall, handsome european aristocrat. Hes kind of a wider celebrity. The confederates kill him. 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 like up, they hang him up. People would come by and spit on him, throw things at him as a public dehumanization the next day it goes out and they continue to desecrate the corpse. They cant find it, its gone. His leg is going. Crazy but came down and i 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 east but they are all gone. Lincoln wants to visit jeff daviess 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 couldve been killed, easily. That its his ung son, tatty. He goes to jeff daviss office. He sits in his chair, he cant 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 burly guy on the left, that is rose. Roses put back in solitary confinement, beaten yet again. Rose, somehow, lived through all of this. He is one of those people that you just cant kill. Stays in uniform, becomes a general. States and entire career in the military service and lives along life. The man begged rose to write a memoir about his remarkable heroism. He is so humble, he wont do it. They finally backed him he just writes assure the other men were great. I managed to escape. The other man that escaped with him were so angry with him for being so humble, that prompted them to all write their accounts, which also vibe. 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. Kentuckys 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 straight, 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 fly. He was a scholar and a poet. The poetry written kept men inspired, on behalf of the families, women and children and everything it keeps the men inspired. Hes leaving 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 let it tour in cuba few years ago. Gelotte a hospital, lot of street, a lot of 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 gelotte us 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 in 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 bartlesonms 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 shell break again, will that repeat the sentinels refrain, all is well. Bartlesons poetry survive. What happened to libby . Even though lincoln said leave the, they tore down. A group of chicago investors body. They loaded up, brickbybrick. Put it on a train, to go to chicago. The train derails, sending thousands of bricks, can, and everything all over. They loaded up, it takes forever. They dont 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 uniform. 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. Theres a brick in a museum in ohio. Theres a break in richmond. It is gone. Heres the inside of the museum. You can see remnants of libby. That would, the bricks, the cannon, 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, 20 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 heavy overheard 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. Its 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 whats on the site now . The virginia holocaust museum. How entirely appropriate, consecrating in hollowing 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. Weve lost libby. Here is the key from libby, one of the barred windows. This is in a Virginia Museum of history in culture enrichment. Great museum barred windows are about four feet high. Theres a key. There is a handful of items in richmond. There is a memorial to lincoln. That its his young son, that he. Who visited the site with him. They have a quote from lincolns second inaugural event, right before his death. There are two paintings of libby that are quite famous. Its a beautiful painting, the problem, of course, is its 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 in 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, doesnt it . You can feel the sense of it being a bit haunted. Fog man or half clothes. Very stages of dying on the ground. It is dark. The only thing i dont like about it is its not nearly crowded enough and it has an extremely high ceiling. We get a false to picking of it. I will and by saying and shameless plug my book. Proceeds goes to my kids to wish and. War brings out the best in us, and the worst enough, doesnt 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 libyan edgewood bill 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 came to andersonville . Yes, we dont have an exact count. Let me 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 a little. Talk who had a 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, theres 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. On a particular tuesday, what they ate. 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 its 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 removed andersonville. It was still far away from anything, out in the middle of nowhere. Good question. A lot of men died. We dont 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 their. Plenty in primary source information. But Thomas Turner destroyed the war records. We dont know exactly how many died. I would guess probably around a [interpreter] thousand. Thats extrapolating based on the number of people the Thomas Tierney goes on a run. He is never captured. He joins jewel early, one of lee tougher generals. Easter call him a battle man. 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, shock toll 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 shock total various name around libby they also contain hundreds of thousands of slaves. We dont 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 president to be picked over by vultures and dogs. Mass burial. The room where they kept the casket embodies, they called it the dead room. One man escape from the dead room. He was so weak. They tie tim 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 excise, weve, youre come from, 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. Tallied to take horse, sidearm, just gone. Grant, lincoln did not want to see lee drag through the streets and chains. Go home. Lee became president of a college. Li 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 wouldve 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 grand. 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 chapel to pack, to take today what is mexico city. Lee being a west point grad and, an officer, a gentleman, why did he joined the confederacy . Li 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. Thats one way of looking at a grant and much respect for lee so did lincoln. The one they didnt like with Jefferson Davis. Who was said to have been more cold blooded than a reptile. Davis was a monstrous human being. Its hard to say anything good about the guy. Lincoln once said if davis wants to run away in flee the country, i wont 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. [inaudible] sure was. One of the greatest generals in American History, stonewall jackson, was one of the the cadets of the am i thought 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 fly. 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 man, a century. 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 dont really anymore. Good. Everybody, i would like to thank you for attending. Enjoy the rest of your day in andersonville. Lets all remember, today, national p. O. W. And mia recognition day. Thank you. American history tv, saturdays on cspan two exploring the people and events that tell the american story. At 8 pm eastern on lectures in history, a look at when polls go bad. American University Professor Joseph Campbell talks about public opinion, election forecasting, and some of the most significant polling misses in american politics. A 9 30 pm eastern, on the presidency, a look at Richard Nixons legacy of chemical, nuclear, biological weapons. Author ofaverting doomsday, ms control during the nixon presidency. Exploring the American History, watch American History tv on cspan two. Find a full schedule on your cspan guide or watch online, anytime, at cspan slash history. Weekends on cspan two a an intellectual feast. Every saturday, American History tv