Saturday, April 15, 1865 - Dr. Samuel A. Mudd opened his front door to the loud knocking at 4 a.m., and saw John Wilkes Booth, a man he knew well. Booth had stayed overnight at Dr. Mudd's farm house the previous fall while visiting Southern Maryland, and the two men had met a second time a month later in Washington, D.C.
Booth told Dr. Mudd that he and a companion were on their way to Washington, D.C. when his horse fell and broke Booth's leg. Booth's companion, David Herold, was a stranger to Dr. Mudd.
Dr. Mudd had no way of knowing that Booth had shot President Abraham Lincoln a few hours earlier in Washington, D.C., and was now racing down through the Maryland countryside hoping to cross the Potomac River into Virginia before the Union Army could catch him.
Dr. Mudd helped Booth up the stairs to the guest bedroom on the second floor, cut the boot off his swollen left leg, and found a broken bone about two inches above the left ankle. He fashioned a splint for the leg, told Booth to rest, and went back to bed himself.
President Lincoln died in Washington three hours later.
When Dr. Mudd visited nearby Bryantown later that day, he heard the news that Lincoln had been assassinated, and that Booth was the assassin. Without alerting the authorities that Booth was at his farm, he returned home to find Booth and Herold leaving, anxious to avoid capture.
When those hunting Booth tracked him to the Mudd farm a few days later, Dr. Mudd told them he didn't know who the man with the broken leg was. It was this decision to mislead the authorities that led to Dr. Mudd's arrest, trial, conviction, and imprisonment. The government's reward poster for Booth and his co-conspirators said:
All persons harboring or secreting the said persons, or either of them, or aiding or assisting their concealment or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of the president and the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State, and shall be subject to trial before a Military Commission and the punishment of DEATH.
Dr. Mudd escaped the death penalty, but was sentenced to life imprisonment. After the trial, one of the military judges wrote:
Dr. Mudd attracted much interest and his guilt as an active conspirator was not clearly made out. His main guilt was the fact that he failed to deliver them, that is, Booth and Herold, to their pursuers.
Dr. Mudd's failure to turn Booth over to the authorities remains a mystery, but some have speculated that he may have been afraid a captured Booth would implicate him in an earlier plot of Booth to kidnap the president. There is no evidence that Dr. Mudd was ever part of that plot, but he may have known about it if Booth tried to recruit him into it during their two meetings.
The Assassin's Doctor is a complete biography of Dr. Mudd's life - his early years growing up on his parent's large tobacco plantation, his education, family, involvement with John Wilkes Booth, the assassination, trial, conviction, imprisonment at Fort Jefferson, his attempted escape, hero of a horrific yellow fever epidemic, his pardon, and his life after returning home. It includes many photos and the full text of historic documents about Dr. Mudd's involvement with John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln assassination. The Assassin's Doctor will make a good addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in Dr. Mudd and the Lincoln assassination.
About the Author :
Robert Summers has been researching, writing, and lecturing on Dr. Samuel A. Mudd's role in the Lincoln assassination for more than a decade. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, which is convenient to the U.S. National Archives and the Library of Congress where many original source documents about the Civil War and the Lincoln assassination are available to researchers. Robert also maintains a website at samuelmudd.com which provides pdf downloads, video, audio, and other information about Dr. Mudd that could not be included in The Assassin's Doctor book.
