Impossible Escapes: Civil War

Colonel Thomas Rose is one of more than 1000 Union officers held in Richmond Virginia’s notorious Libby Prison. It’s an inescapable fortress known for its stark white walls its numbing conditions and its rats. But for POWs like Colonel Rose there is just one thing to think about: escape.

The frontlines of the Civil War lie hundreds of miles from Vermont but Confederate Bennett Young plans to bring the war to the North. He’ll lead a group of raiders into the town of St. Albans to rob its banks and burn its buildings then make a run for Canada. But a local posse has other plans.

If the POWs of Libby Prison faced "Rat Hell" you could call what Wallace Turnage endured "snake hell". Turnage was born a slave and by the time we pick up the story from the recently rediscovered autobiography he'd already made multiple escape attempts ...and been brutally beaten for them.