Overview
Mere words could never grasp completely the prison's conditions, the mental states of the prisoners, or what they went through to make their escape. We can only imagine the despair the unfortunate ones felt who were recaptured, knowing that not only were they going back into the prison they had worked so hard to escape, but that they also would probably be treated worse than before for having fled. Of the 109 who escaped from Libby Prison on February 9, 1864, 48 were successful in reaching Union lines. Few of those who made their way out through the tunnel did so without being bitten by the rats in Rat Hell. The prisoners who were unable to get out through the tunnel would report that they were told the next day by several guards that the guards had seen the men exiting through the gate but didn't bother them. They assumed it was their own men sneaking out after stealing items from the prisoners' packages!Editorials
Kirkus Reviews
Stalag 17 on the Chickahominy River, with Bluecoat and Secesh stand-ins for Cookie and Sergeant Schultz.During the Civil War, amateur historian Gindlesperger writes, the South captured some 200,000 Union soldiers. Most wound up in hellholes like Andersonville, Ga., and the equally notorious Libby Prison of Richmond, Va. Early in 1864, Pennsylvania infantry colonel Thomas E. Rose, who had spent two years inside Libby, organized a daring escape, and he and 108 of his comrades tunneled their way into the prison's rat-infested sewers. Forty-eight of those men eventually made their way to Union lines and freedom, while the others were recaptured or killed. This should be a compelling story, but Gindlesperger does not tell it well. In recounting Rose's feat, he falls into some of the worst excesses of you-were-there historical writing, especially with his annoying reliance on invented dialogue that resounds with every possible cliché: "Why don't y'all go back up North and leave us poor dirt farmers alone?" Gindlesperger has one exasperated Southerner call out to the assembled prisoners, who probably would have liked to do just that, while a jailer promises, "Y'all are going to get a chance to partake of some of our Southern hospitality." One suspects that if Gindlesperger had stuck to straightforward narrative, without these tedious inventions, he could have produced a longish article for a historical journal, a more appropriate venue for a discussion of this small sideshow in history. The problem of grating dialogue is compounded by unimaginative prose—Libby's chief jailer is, of course, a "cruel and ruthless man"—and by the author's failure to discuss what significance, if any, the Libby breakout might have had on the course of the conflict.
Adds little to Civil War literature.