Samuel Mudd
Samuel Alexander Mudd Sr. was an American physician who was imprisoned for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth concerning the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Mudd worked as a doctor and tobacco farmer in Southern Maryland. The Civil War seriously damaged his business, especially when Maryland abolished slavery in 1864. That year, he first met Booth, who was planning to kidnap Lincoln, and Mudd was seen in company with three of the conspirators. However, his part in the plot, if any, remains unclear.
Booth fatally shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865, but was injured during his escape from the scene. He subsequently rode with conspirator David Herold to Mudd's home in the early hours of April 15 for surgery on his fractured leg before he crossed into Virginia. Sometime that day, Mudd must have learned of the assassination but did not report Booth's visit to the authorities for another 24 hours. This fact appeared to link him to the crime, as did his various changes of story under interrogation. A military commission found Mudd guilty of aiding and conspiring in a murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment, escaping execution by a single vote.
Mudd was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869. Despite repeated attempts by family members and others to have it expunged, his conviction was never overturned.
Early years
Born in Charles County, Maryland into a Roman Catholic family, Samuel Mudd was the fourth of 10 children of Henry Lowe and Sarah Ann Mudd. He grew up on Oak Hill, his father's tobacco plantation of several hundred acres, which was worked by 89 slaves and was located about southeast of Washington, D.C.At age 15, after several years of home tutoring, Mudd went off to boarding school at St. John's Literary Institute, now known as Saint John's Catholic Prep School, in Frederick, Maryland. Two years later, he enrolled at Georgetown College in the District of Columbia. He then studied medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, writing his thesis on dysentery.
Upon graduation in 1856, Mudd returned to Charles County to practice medicine, marrying his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Frances Dyer, one year later.
As a wedding present, Mudd's father gave the couple of his best farmland and a new house named St. Catharine. While the house was under construction, the Mudds lived with Frankie's bachelor brother, Jeremiah Dyer, finally moving into their new home in 1859. They had nine children in all: four before Mudd's arrest and five more after his release from prison. To supplement his income from his medical practice, Mudd became a small-scale tobacco grower, using five slaves according to the 1860 census. Mudd believed that slavery was divinely ordained and wrote a letter to the theologian Orestes Brownson to that effect.
With the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Southern Maryland's slave system and the economy that it supported rapidly began to collapse. In 1863, the Union Army established Camp Stanton, just from the Mudd farm, to enlist black freedmen and runaway slaves. Six regiments totaling over 8,700 black soldiers, many from Southern Maryland, were trained there. In 1864, Maryland, which was exempt from Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, abolished slavery, making it difficult for growers like Mudd to operate their plantations. As a result, Mudd considered selling his farm and depending on his medical practice. As Mudd pondered his alternatives, he was introduced to someone who said he might be interested in buying his property: 26 year-old actor John Wilkes Booth.
Booth connection
According to a statement made by associated conspirator George Atzerodt, discovered long after his death and recorded while he was in federal custody on May 1, 1865, Mudd knew in advance about Booth's plans; Atzerodt was sure the doctor knew, he said, because Booth had "sent liquors and provisions... about two weeks before the murder to Dr. Mudd's."Although that is true, some historians believe there may have been other reasons behind Mudd's relationship with Booth. The trial brought forth many theories of Mudd's involvement in the assassination of Lincoln. One theory posits that Mudd was involved in a completely different conspiracy to gain an upper hand for the southern states. Prior to killing Lincoln, Booth had intended to kidnap the president and ransom him and other political affiliates of the Union for a large sum of money. This plan was in effect until the night of the assassination, when Booth met up with Atzerodt, David Herold, and Lewis Powell and disclosed the plot to assassinate the president instead. Following the assassination, Powell came forth by stating that Booth had not told him until this meeting and that the other men did not know about the plot until the night of the assassination. This supports the theory that Mudd may have been an accomplice to the plot to kidnap the president, but not a conspirator to the assassination.
After Booth shot Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865, he broke his left fibula. According to his diary, this occurred when he jumped from the presidential box while fleeing Ford's Theater. The reliability of this diary is questionable, as Booth intended it more as a manifesto to be published, and he embellished other facts in it. One example is, "I struck boldly and not as the papers sayI shouted sic semper before I fired." which is proven untrue by every eyewitness account of the assassination independently agreeing that Booth shouted after he fired. Furthermore, Booth and Herold told Mudd that Booth broke his leg falling from his horse afterward. If Mudd was indeed a part of the conspiracy, Booth would have no motivation to lie about this to Mudd.
Booth met up with Herold and both men made for Virginia via southern Maryland. They stopped at Mudd's house around 4 on April 15; Mudd splinted Booth's leg and gave him a shoe to wear. He also arranged for a carpenter, John Best, to make a pair of crutches for Booth. Booth paid Mudd $25 in greenbacks for his medical treatment. He and Herold spent between twelve and fifteen hours at Mudd's house. They slept in the front bedroom on the second floor. It is unclear whether Mudd had yet been informed that Booth had killed Lincoln.
Mudd went to Bryantown during the day on April 15 to run errands; if he had not already heard the news of the assassination from Booth, he certainly learned of it on the trip. He returned home that evening, and accounts differ as to whether Booth and Herold had already left, whether Mudd met them as they were leaving, and whether they left at Mudd's urging and with his assistance.
It is certain that Mudd did not immediately contact the authorities. When questioned, he stated that he had not wanted to leave his family alone in the house in case the assassins returned and found him absent and his family unprotected. He waited until Mass the following day, Easter Sunday, when he asked his second cousin, Dr. George Mudd, a resident of Bryantown, to notify the 13th New York Cavalry in Bryantown, under the command of Lieutenant David Dana. Mudd's delay in contacting the authorities drew suspicion and was a significant factor in tying him to the conspiracy. During his initial investigative interview on April 18, Mudd stated that he had never seen either of the parties before. In his sworn statement of April 22, he told about Booth's visit to Bryantown in November 1864
but then said, "I have never seen Booth since that time to my knowledge until last Saturday morning." Later testimony from Louis J. Weichmann revealed that Mudd hid his meeting with Booth in Washington in December 1864. In prison, Mudd admitted the Washington meeting and said he ran into Booth by chance during a Christmas shopping trip. Mudd's failure to mention the meeting in his interview with detectives proved to be a big mistake: When Weichmann told the authorities of the meeting, they realized that Mudd had misled them and immediately began to treat him as a suspect, rather than a witness.
During the conspiracy trial, Lieutenant Alexander Lovett testified
Trial
After Booth's death on April 26, 1865, Mudd was arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder Lincoln. Representative Frederick Stone was the senior defense counsel for Mudd. On May 1, President Johnson ordered the formation of a nine-man military commission to try the conspirators. Mudd was represented by General Thomas Ewing Jr. The trial began on May 10. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O'Laughlen, Edmund Spangler and Samuel Arnold were all charged with conspiring to murder Lincoln. The prosecution called 366 witnesses.The defense sought to prove that Mudd was a loyal citizen, citing his self-description as a "Union man" and asserting that he was "a deeply religious man, devoted to family, and a kind master to his slaves." The prosecution presented witnesses who testified that he had shot one of his slaves in the leg and threatened to send others to Richmond, Virginia, to assist in the construction of Confederate defenses. The prosecution also contended that he had been a member of a Confederate communications distribution agency and had sheltered Confederate soldiers on his plantation, and that he had been a member of a posse which captured runaway slaves and sent them to Richmond. Several of Mudd's former slaves testified that he had said on multiple occasions that President Lincoln ought to be shot. An acquaintance named Daniel Thomas also testified that in early 1865 Mudd had predicted that Lincoln and his cabinet "would be killed in six or seven weeks".
On June 29, Mudd was found guilty with the others. The testimony of Louis J. Weichmann was crucial in obtaining the convictions. According to historian Edward Steers, the testimony presented by former slaves was also crucial, but it faded from public memory. Mudd escaped execution by one vote and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Surratt, Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold were hanged at the Old Penitentiary at the Washington Arsenal on July 7, 1865.