An error occurred during the prosecution of this work that nearly proved fatal to the enterprise. After a sufficient distance was supposed to have been made, an excavation was commenced to reach the top of the ground. The person working, carefully felt his way upward, when suddenly a small amount of the top earth fell in, and through this he could plainly see two sentinels apparently looking at him. One said to the other, "I have been hearing a strange noise in the ground there!" After listening a short time, the other replied that it was "nothing but rats." The working party had not been seen. After consultation, this opening was carefully filled with dirt and shored up. The work was then recommenced, and after digging about fifteen feet further the objective point under the shed was successfully reached.
This tunnel required about thirty days of patient, tedious and dangerous labor. It was eight feet below the street, between sixty and seventy feet in length, and barely large enough for a full-grown person to crawl through, by pulling and pushing himself along with his hands and feet. Among the officers entitled to merit in the execution of this work, Col. T. E. Rose, of Pennsylvania, deserves particular mention.
When all was complete, the company was organized into two parties; the first under the charge of Major McDonald, of Ohio, and the second was placed under my direction. The parties having provided themselves with citizens' clothing, which had at different times been sent to the prison by friends in the North, and having filled their pockets with bread and dried meat from their boxes, commenced to escape about seven P. M., on the 9th of February, 1864; Major McDonald's party leaving first. In order to distract the attention of the guard, a dancing party with music was extemporized in the same room. As each one had to pass out in the immediate presence of these Confederate soldiers, when he stepped into the street from the outside of the line, and as the guard were under orders to fire upon a prisoner escaping, without even calling upon him to halt, the first men who descended to the tunnel wore that quiet gloom so often seen in the army before going into battle. It was a living drama; dancing in one part of the room, dark shadows disappearing through the chimney in another part, and the same shadows re-appearing upon the opposite walk, and the sentinel at his post, with a voice that rang out upon the evening air, announcing: "Eight o'clock, Post No. One," and "All is well!" and at the same time a Yankee soldier was passing in his front, and a line of Yankee soldiers were crawling under his feet. The passage was so small that the process of departure was necessarily slow; a few inches of progress only being made at each effort, and to facilitate locomotion outside garments were taken off and pushed forward.