Great American Adventure Stories Read online

  Great

  American

  Adventure

  Stories

  Great

  American

  Adventure

  Stories

  edited by

  Tom McCarthy

  guilford

  connecticut

  An imprint of Globe Pequot

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2017 by Thomas P. McCarthy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: McCarthy, Tom, 1953–, editor of compilation.

  Title: Great American adventure stories / edited by Tom McCarthy.

  Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press Classics, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017009072 (print) | LCCN 2017019341 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493030002 (electronic) | ISBN 9781493029990 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: United States—History—Anecdotes.

  Classification: LCC E179 (ebook) | LCC E179 .G755 2017 (print) | DDC 973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009072

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Maggie and Britta, just starting their own American adventures

  Contents

  Contents

  About This Book

  1. The Tunnel at Libby Prison

  2. The Last Pirate

  3. A Lynching in Golden

  4. A Tragedy of the Sierras

  5. Eyewitness

  6. Deluge

  7. The Nome Stampede

  8. How the Merrimac Was Sunk in Cuba

  9. Beheaded

  10. An Ill-Fated Robbery

  11. Kit Carson on the Frontier

  12. Running the Blockade

  13. Daniel Boone, Captive

  14. Frozen

  15. Horror in Galveston

  Sources

  About This Book

  By Tom McCarthy

  Americans love adventure. It is what this country was built on. This collection will give you an unvarnished look back at the events that forged America’s reputation for calm resolve, courage, and an undiluted can-do spirit in the face of unrelenting challenges. In fact, it will reinforce that well-deserved reputation in spades.

  Americans have also long loved reading, sitting back, and enjoying their rich and vibrant history from the comfort of their favorite chair. I am certain you’ll love reading Great American Adventure Stories, but I can’t promise it will be relaxing.

  As the stories in this collection will show, facing death and overcoming fear were just another day at the office for the people featured. None wanted to be heroes, though they were. None wanted attention, and for the most part, they received very little. Until now, perhaps. Modesty suited every single person featured here. After all, that is another American trait. Perhaps the stories here will finally deliver a bit of much-deserved attention.

  There has never been a more exciting collection of stories selected specifically to celebrate the uniqueness of the American character and the indomitable spirit forged as our country came of age.

  Great American Adventure Stories is guaranteed to inform, entertain, and keep you turning the pages—even if it at times it will have you on the edge of your seat. These fifteen tales are a testament to courage, bravery, and the almost-innate ability of Americans to carry on in the face of tremendous challenge.

  These true stories will all show that the unquenchable American thirst for excitement and adventure has remained intact throughout the years. Great American Adventure Stories presents long-hidden gems, stunning both in their accounts and in their skillful, almost-magnetic ways of weaving a story that is guaranteed to get the adrenaline flowing.

  And along the way, you’ll learn some interesting facts that have eluded many history books.

  How did residents of the quiet town of Northfield, Minnesota, react to a robbery of the only bank in town by the notorious James and Younger brothers? Not well, you will learn. Perhaps you might like to imagine yourself among the frightened but resilient group of 109 Union Army officers who dug themselves out of the notoriously brutal Libby Prison—and the fate of the forty-eight who were recaptured. Many disinterested scholars have written of John Brown’s historic raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, but few actually saw it. Samuel Vanderlip Leech did, and you will find here his contemporaneous account, unvarnished and unfiltered. Along the way, you might be surprised to learn that that among the minor participants in this event were Robert E. Lee, J. E. B. Stuart, and John Wilkes Booth.

  What happened to the last American pirate in the North Atlantic? You’ll read how Mogul McKenzie met his fate. Looking for a good detective story from the Old West? D. J. Cook, chief of the Rocky Mountain Detective Agency, describes a troubling Colorado murder and how it was solved. Residents of Golden, Colorado, might be interested in trying to find the graves of two desperadoes buried by angry citizens.

  Maybe you might want to spend a few weeks with the doomed Donner Party, frozen and famished in the high Sierras? Want a taste of the American frontier? Here is how Daniel Boone saw it as he looked for more elbow room. And how the famed scout Kit Carson viewed it as the young country expanded and blossomed in the West.

  Here also is an eyewitness account of the Johnstown flood and the heroics it sparked from normal citizens trapped by the cataclysm. Another story captures the heat and chaos of the Alaska gold rush, written by a preacher who was directed by a friend who knew the rowdy crowds in Nome, “You were never needed more.” Yet another story will take you nervously onto the deck of a ship trying to run a Civil War blockade.

  That is the magic and magnetism of this collection. These stories offer fresh, firsthand perspectives that are free of the often more gentle versions written and filtered years later by historians. You will be surprised by Daniel Boone’s reflections and grudging admiration for the Native Americans who held him captive. You will be stunned by the chilling observations of eyewitnesses of the aftermath of the Galveston hurricane, as they watched as “people realized that with every passing moment souls were being hurried into eternity.”

  These tales all have one thing in common: the real spit, grit, and spirit of people who made this country what it is today. It is good reading, indeed. But will it be relaxing? That is up to you.

  1

  The Tunnel at Libby Prison

  A Civil War Escape

  By Frank E. Moran

  Richmond’s Libby Prison was dank, miserable, and foreboding. The rats and the cold and the scarcity of food were just minor inconveniences. To the undaunted Union soldiers crammed into it, there was only one thing to do—escape. There were a few obstacles to overcome first.

  Among all the thrilling incidents in the history of Libby Prison, none exceeds in interest the celebrated tunnel escape which occurred on the night of February 9, 1864. I was one of the 109 Union officers who passed through the tunnel and one of the ill-fated 48 that were retaken. I and
two companions—Lieutenant Charles H. Morgan of the 21st Wisconsin regiment, who has since served several terms in Congress from Missouri, and Lieutenant William L. Watson of the same company and regiment—when recaptured by the Confederate cavalry were in sight of the Union picket posts. Strange as it may appear, no accurate and complete account has ever been given to the public of this, the most ingenious and daring escape made on either side during the Civil War. Twelve of the party of fifteen who dug the tunnel are still living, including their leader.

  Thomas E. Rose, colonel of the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteers, the engineer and leader in the plot throughout—now a captain in the 16th United States Infantry—was taken prisoner at the battle of Chickamauga, September 20, 1863. On his way to Richmond, he escaped from his guards at Weldon, North Carolina, but, after a day’s wandering about the pine forests with a broken foot, was retaken by a detachment of Confederate cavalry and sent to Libby Prison, Richmond, where he arrived October 1, 1863.

  Libby Prison fronts on Carey Street, Richmond, and stands upon a hill which descends abruptly to the canal, from which its southern wall is divided only by a street, and having a vacant lot on the east. The building was wholly detached, making it a comparatively easy matter to guard the prison securely with a small force and keep every door and window in full view from without. As an additional measure of safety, prisoners were not allowed on the ground floor, except that in the daytime they were permitted to use the first floor of the middle section for a cook room. The interior embraced nine large warehouse rooms 105 × 45, with eight feet from each floor to ceiling, except the upper floor, which gave more room, owing to the pitch of the gable roof. The abrupt slant of the hill gives the building an additional story on the south side. The whole building really embraces three sections, and these were originally separated by heavy blank walls. The Confederates cut doors through the walls of the two upper floors, which comprised the prisoners’ quarters, and they were thus permitted to mingle freely with each other, but there was no communication whatever between the three large rooms on the first floor. Beneath these floors were three cellars of the same dimensions as the rooms above them, and, like them, divided from each other by massive blank walls. For ready comprehension, let these be designated the east, middle, and west cellars. Except in the lofts known as “Streight’s room” and “Milroy’s room,” which were occupied by the earliest inmates of Libby in 1863, there was no furniture in the building, and only a few of the early comers possessed such a luxury as an old army blanket or a knife, cup, and tin plate. As a rule, the prisoner, by the time he reached Libby, found himself devoid of earthly goods, save the meager and dust-begrimed summer garb in which he had made his unlucky campaign.

  At night the six large lofts presented strange war pictures, over which a single tallow candle wept copious and greasy tears that ran down over the petrified loaf of cornbread, Borden’s condensed-milk can, or bottle in which it was set. The candle flickered on until “Taps,” when the guards, with unconscious irony, shouted, “Lights out!”—at which signal it usually disappeared amid a shower of boots and such other missiles as were at hand. The sleepers covered the six floors, lying in ranks, head to head and foot to foot, like prostrate lines of battle. For the general good, and to preserve something like military precision, these ranks (especially when cold weather compelled them to lie close for better warmth) were subdivided into convenient squads under charge of a “captain,” who was invested with authority to see that every man lay “spoon fashion.”

  No consideration of personal convenience was permitted to interfere with the general comfort of the “squad.” Thus, when the hard floor could no longer be endured on the right side—especially by the thin men—the captain gave the command, “Attention, Squad Number Four! Prepare to spoon! One—two—spoon!” And the whole squad flopped over on the left side.

  The first floor on the west of the building was used by the Confederates as an office and for sleeping quarters for the prison officials, and a stairway guarded by sentinels led from this to Milroy’s room just above it. As before explained, the middle room was shut off from the office by a heavy blank wall. This room, known as the “kitchen,” had two stoves in it, one of which stood about ten feet from the heavy door that opened on the Carey Street sidewalk, and behind the door was a fireplace. The room contained also several long pine tables with permanent seats attached, such as may be commonly seen at picnic grounds. The floor was constantly inundated here by several defective and overworked water faucets and a leaky trough.

  A stairway without banisters led up on the southwest end of the floor, above which was a room known as the “Chickamauga room,” being chiefly occupied by Chickamauga prisoners. The sentinel who had formerly been placed at this stairway at night to prevent the prisoners from entering the kitchen had been withdrawn when, in the fall of 1863, the horrible condition of the floor made it untenable for sleeping purposes.

  The uses to which the large ground-floor room east of the kitchen was put varied during the first two years of the war, but early in October of 1863 and thereafter, it was permanently used and known as the hospital, and it contained a large number of cots, which were never unoccupied. An apartment had been made at the north or front of the room, which served as a doctor’s office and laboratory. Like those adjoining it on the west, this room had a large door opening on Carey Street, which was heavily bolted and guarded on the outside.

  The arrival of the Chickamauga prisoners greatly crowded the upper floors and compelled the Confederates to board up a small portion of the east cellar at its southeast corner as an additional cook room, several large caldrons having been set in a rudely built furnace; so, for a short period, the prisoners were allowed down there in the daytime to cook. A stairway led from this cellar to the room above, which subsequently became the hospital.

  Such, in brief, was the condition of things when Colonel Rose arrived at the prison. From the hour of his coming, a means of escape became his constant and eager study, and with this purpose in view, he made a careful and minute survey of the entire premises.

  From the windows of the upper east or “Gettysburg room,” he could look across the vacant lot on the east and get a glimpse of the yard between, two adjacent buildings which faced the canal and Carey Street, respectively, and he estimated the intervening space at about seventy feet. From the south windows, he looked out across a street upon the canal and James River, running parallel with each other, the two streams at this point being separated by a low and narrow strip of land. This strip periodically disappeared when protracted seasons of heavy rain came or when spring floods so rapidly swelled the river that the latter invaded the cellars of Libby. At such times it was common to see enormous swarms of rats come out from the lower doors and windows of the prison and make head for dry land in swimming platoons amid the cheers of the prisoners in the upper windows. On one or two occasions, Rose observed workmen descending from the middle of the south-side street into a sewer running through its center, and concluded that this sewer must have various openings to the canal both to the east and west of the prison.

  The north portion of the cellar contained a large quantity of loose packing straw covering the floor to an average depth of two feet, and this straw afforded shelter, especially at night, for a large colony of rats, which gave the place the name of “Rat Hell.”

  In one afternoon’s inspection of this dark end, Rose suddenly encountered a fellow prisoner, Major A. G. Hamilton of the 12th Kentucky Cavalry. A confiding friendship followed, and the two men entered at once upon the plan of gaining their liberty. They agreed that the most feasible scheme was a tunnel, to begin in the rear of the little kitchen-apartment at the southeast corner of Rat Hell. Without more ado they secured a broken shovel and two case knives and began operations.

  Within a few days, the Confederates decided upon certain changes in the prison for the greater security of their captives. A week afterward the cook room wa
s abandoned, the stairway nailed up, the prisoners sent to the upper floors, and all communication with the east cellar was cut off. This was a sore misfortune, for this apartment was the only possible base of successful tunnel operations. Colonel Rose now began to study other practicable means of escape and spent night after night examining the posts and watching the movements of the sentinels on the four sides of Libby. One very dark night, during a howling storm, Rose again unexpectedly met Hamilton in a place where no prisoner could reasonably be looked for at such an hour. For an instant the impenetrable darkness made it impossible for either to determine whether he had met a friend or foe: Neither had a weapon, yet each involuntarily felt for one, and each made ready to spring at the other’s throat, when a flash of lightning revealed their identity. The two men had availed themselves of the darkness of the night and the roar of the storm to attempt an escape from a window of the upper west room to a platform that ran along the west outer wall of the prison, from which they hoped to reach the ground and elude the sentinels, whom they conjectured would be crouched in the shelter of some doorway or other partial refuge that might be available, but so vivid and frequent were the lightning flashes that the attempt was seen to be extremely hazardous.

  Rose now spoke of the entrance from the south-side street to the middle cellar, having frequently noticed the entrance and exit of workmen at that point, and expressed his belief that, if an entrance could be effected to this cellar, it would afford them the only chance of slipping past the sentinels.

  He hunted up a bit of pinewood, which he whittled into a sort of wedge, and the two men went down into the dark, vacant kitchen directly over this cellar. With the wedge Rose pried a floorboard out of its place and made an opening large enough to let himself through. He had never been in this middle cellar and was wholly ignorant of its contents or whether it was occupied by Confederates or workmen, but as he had made no noise and the place was in profound darkness, he decided to go down and reconnoiter.