Rare firsthand accounts bring us inside some of the most daring escape stories from the American 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.

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A band of POWs held in the Confederate capital attempt the Civil War’s largest prison escape.

Breaking out of Libby Prison

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.

Confederate raiders attack a small town in Vermont. A local posse tries to cut off their escape.

Rebel Raid in Vermont

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.

Wallace Turnage was born a slave. He made multiple escape attempts, but on his sixth—and final—attempt, he endured a genuine odyssey.

Into the Rebel Swamp

Enslaved aboard the Confederate ship the CSS Planter, Robert Smalls has learned the skills of a naval captain. One night when he and his enslaved crewmates are left alone on the ship during the height of the war, they need to decide whether to risk it all and make a run for the nearby US Navy.

Robert Smalls is enslaved, but he has the skills and the nerve to sail a rebel ship to freedom.

Robert Smalls: Steamboat to Freedom

Dr. John Doy is a guide on the Underground Railroad attempting to lead a group of men, women, and children to safety in Canada. When their party is intercepted by a notorious slave catcher, Doy is thrown into a Missouri jail. All appears to be lost until his friends hatch a bold plot to free him.

John Doy is arrested along the Underground Railroad, but his friends are determined to set him free.

John Doy and the Immortal 10

Pauline Cushman is a Union war widow, a stage actress—and a spy. But on a mission behind enemy lines in search of the Confederate General Braxton Bragg, she is arrested and sentenced to be hanged. Can her acting skills rescue her from this life and death predicament?

When actress and Union spy Pauline Cushman is captured, her performance skills offer her a way out.