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.

Go to top