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How to escape from prison was ever the thoughts by day and
dreams by night of the incarcerated. Plans were concocted,
partly put into execution, and then proved failures.
Some of these caused increased suffering to the prisoners after
their discovery; for, where the real parties could not be found,
the whole were ill-treated as a punishment to the guilty.
Tunnelling was generally the mode for escape; and tunnelling
became the order of the day, or, rather, the work for the night.
In the latter part of November, 1863, the unusual gaiety
of the prisoners showed that some plan of exit from the prison
was soon to be exhibited.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE GREAT TUNNEL AND THE MISTAKE
FOR several weeks, some ten or fifteen of the most
able-bodied of the prisoners had been nightly at work;
and the great tunnel, the
ever projected by men
for their escape from prison, was thought to be finished,
with the exception of the tapping outside of the prison wall.
The digging of a tunnel is not an easy job, and, consequently,
is of slow progress. The Andersonville prisoners had to dig
ten feet down into the earth, after cutting through the floor,
and then went a distance of fifty feet to get beyond the wall.
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