Leopold Markbreit
LEOPOLD MARKBREIT, a native of Vienna, came to Cincinnati with his parents in 1848, when six years of age. He studied law with his half-brother, the talented Fred. Hasaurek; became a law partner with Rutherford B. Hayes; then went into the Union army, where he eventually attained the rank of colonel; from 1868 to 1873 was U.S Minister to Bolivia and now edits the Volksblatt.
In the war period he was taken prisoner, and sent to Libby Prison in Richmond. Through the story of his sufferings there he attained a sad celebrity.
After five months of ordinary imprisonment, he and three other victims were selected as hostages and placed in close confinement, to prevent the execution of four rebels, who were charged with recruiting within the Union lines in Kentucky (which charge was of a rather doubtful nature, as that part of Kentucky would be considered as disputed ground), and had been sentenced to death as spies by a military court convened by Gen. Burnside. The four hostages were placed in a subterranean dungeon of the Libby, where they had hardly room enough to lie down at night. For months they were lying buried in this hole, and received only one meal a day. Even this meal was insufficient to appease their hunger, for it consisted gen-erally only of a handful of corn meal (into which the cobs had been ground), a little of rotten bacon and some rice or beans. This food was not enough for life, and too much for absolute starvation. The unfortu-nate men were soon reduced to skeletons, and would, doubtless, have died, if the negroes employed in the Libby prison had not, from time to time, smuggled in some food to them. The rats, which the prisoners killed with pieces of wood in their dungeon, were cooked for them by the kind-hearted negroes, and taken back to their cells. The sufferings the poor prisoners had to endure were beyond all comprehension and only when they were transported to Salisbury, N. C., a change for the better took place. From Salisbury, Col. Markbreit was taken to Danville, Va., and from there back to Libby, till at last, in February, 1865, his half-brother, F. Hassaurek, succeeded in having him liberated. He had been imprisoned for more than thir-teen months. His health had been so in-jured by these sufferings that he never fully recovered.” Mr. Markbreit is tall in person, and dignified and courteous in manner. In his South American experience he was an eye-witness to several bloody revolutions, and at the risk of his own life often protected the lives of the members of overthrown governments who sought refuge with the United States legation.
From Historical Collections of Ohio: By Henry Howe; Pub. 1888