From the Richmond Examiner, 7/14/1864
ATTEMPTED ESCAPE FROM THE LIBBY PRISON. - About two o'clock
yesterday morning Major McClellan and Lieutenant Aking, both of the
Twenty-second New York cavalry, and under treatment in the hospital portion of
the Libby prison, forced a staple from the Cary street door, and rushing out
upon the guard, attempted to escape by running. Two of the sentinels discharged
their muskets at them as they ran, without serious effect. The freed Yankees ran
to Twenty-first street, up which they ran, and were there headed off and
captured by another guard on duty at that point. They were returned to the
Libby, when it was ascertained that a ball from one of the muskets fired at them
had passed through the clothes of Lieutenant Aking, grazing the flesh of his
left side. This ball or the other one, fired on a line with Cary street,
whistled by hospital No. 21, at Twenty-fifth and Cary streets, four hundred and
fifty yards distant, and the guards there were on the alert if the escaping
prisoners had kept on that route. - Major Turner, the commandant, who was
sleeping in his tent near the Libby was aroused by the firing and was soon on
the spot. He returned the prisoners to more secure confinement.
The above is the only attempt at escape which has occurred
among the prisoners for some time, so rigid is the discipline enforced.
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