Existing comment:
Dr. Samuel Mudd:
Nearly 150 years later, debate continues to swirl around Mudd and his role in the Booth conspiracy. Was he merely a country doctor in the wrong place at the wrong time -- attending to Booth's shattered ankle and allowing him to spend the night at his home near Bryantown, Maryland? Or was Dr. Mudd, in fact, part of the conspiracy from the beginning?
Recent scholarship has revealed that the two men knew each other long before their fateful encounter the night of April 14 and Mudd introduced Booth to John Surratt. At his trial, the doctor's insistence that he had only met Booth once was easily disproved. Judged guilty, he escaped hanging by a single vote.
Mudd would do much to redeem his reputation by caring heroically for victims of the yellow fever epidemic that struck the garrison at Ford Jefferson, where he was imprisoned until pardoned by Andrew Johnson in 1869. |