As the American Civil War rages on, two Union POWs, one a white Colonel, the other a black Sergeant, team up with a wealthy Richmond Heiress to execute a daring mass escape from a harsh, rat-infested Confederate prison.

SYNOPSIS:

September 27, 1863. Weldon, North Carolina. A bloodhound and his handler are hot on the trail of a fugitive Union prisoner of war, COL. THOMAS ELLWOOD ROSE, 33. Hampered by a broken foot he suffered in battle, the headstrong Rose is recaptured and brought to Libby Prison, an overcrowded, rat-infested, former tobacco warehouse in Richmond, Virginia.

At check-in Rose meets RICHARD TURNER, 25 a ruthless civilian Yankee hater. Known as “THE WARDEN” he confiscates the photo card of Rose’s wife. The two scuffle. Before the situation escalates, the Prison Superintendent, CAPT. THOMAS TURNER (no relation), 23, orders a black prisoner of war, SGT. ROBERT FORD, 35, to escort Rose to the prison hospital.

Unknown to Turner and the Warden, Sgt. Ford is the liaison between Union prisoner, COL. ABEL STREIGHT, 36, and Richmond Unionists led by wealthy heiress ELIZABETH VAN LEW, 44. While Rose wants to get one or two out at a time, Streight wants a massive breakout to free all the Union prisoners in Richmond. Rose and Van Lew think his plan is suicidal.

While surveying the rat-infested East Cellar, Rose bumps into CAPT. ANDREW HAMILTON, 28. Like Rose, Hamilton believes the best way to escape is tunneling past the sentries, and the only safe place in the prison to tunnel is the East Cellar. Despite Rose's suspicious nature, he takes Hamilton under his wing. His plan is to burrow from the East Cellar to a sewer just south of the prison. From there they can travel unseen past the prison sentries.

Their first attempt fails when an informer tells Capt. Turner and the stairs to the East Cellar are boarded up. Hamilton finds another way into the cellar, but their second tunnel also fails when a discarded stove collapses on it. So does a third. However, when one of Van Lew’s spies learns that all the Union prisoners in Richmond, both officers and enlisted men, are to be shipped south to Georgia, Rose has no choice but to start a fourth tunnel.

Rose’s team of conspirators begins a desperate attempt to reach a storage lot over fifty feet away. Digging in squads of five at night and two during the day, they finally breakthrough in the early morning hours of February 9, 1864. One hundred and nine prisoners sneak out through the tunnel later that frigid, winter night. Fifty-nine make it safely back to Union lines.

With Union campfires just a half mile away Rose is recaptured by Rebel spies. He is returned to Libby Prison at the moment Sgt. Ford is to receive 500 lashes for his part in the escape. Rose tries to stop the whipping, but is beaten down with a rifle butt. Sgt. Ford barely survives and spends the next two months in the prison dungeon with Rose.

Two brothers in arms. One white. One black. Both American Patriots.