O.R.--SERIES II--VOLUME IV [S# 117]

UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, ETC., RELATING TO PRISONERS OF WAR AND STATE FROM JUNE 13, 1862, TO NOVEMBER 30, 1862.--#27

[From the Richmond Dispatch, October 17, 1862.]
ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON.

A conspiracy on the part of a number of the prisoners to escape from Castle Thunder was discovered on Wednesday night. The parties had made a long rope of cotton sheets and had gotten everything ready to let Rogers (who is condemned to be shot on Saturday) out of a window, when they were discovered and put in the dungeon. One fellow who <ar117_655> proved very obstreperous was undergoing the bucking process yesterday evening. It is not certainly known that Rogers initiated the movement, but it is believed that his friends in the prison did so to help him. We learn that efforts are constantly being made to escape from this prison and that it is only by unceasing vigilance that they are prevented. The next party discovered trying to get out are to be shot.

Col. [Maj.] Thomas J. Jordan, of the Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry, who was detained from going North on the last flag of truce because charges had been preferred against him by the citizens of Sparta, Tenn., that he allowed his men to commit the most unheard of atrocities on the citizens of that place, was yesterday removed from the Libby Prison and put in Castle Thunder, in company with four Yankees belonging to the First Maryland Cavalry, who are charged with committing a willful murder on an unarmed citizen of the Valley of Virginia. Colonel [Major] Jordan was captured at Tompkinsville, Ky., on the 7th of July. Yesterday seventeen deserters were received into the Castle from the South, sent thither by Major Mallett. Among the other inhabitants there is Capt. Arnold Harris, a Yankee. The cage was empty last night, the city police having made no arrests.

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