Escape From Libby Prison: The Civil War’s Greatest Jailbreak

On this episode of Our American Stories, deep in Richmond, Virginia, a converted warehouse known as Libby Prison held more than 1,200 Union officers during the Civil War. Prisoners survived on rotting cornbread, slept on bare floors, and shared the space with rats that outnumbered both guards and captives. Escape or death were the only ways out. Historian Robert P. Watson, author of Escape!, shares the astonishing and forgotten story of the largest and most daring jailbreak of the Civil War, when Union officers dug a tunnel through raw sewage, emerged onto the streets of Richmond, and risked everything to rejoin the fight.

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