Dr. Samuel Mudd at Fort Jefferson
Convicted in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Imprisoned in one of America's most remote military prisons. Nearly killed while saving the lives of others. Pardoned by the President.
The story of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd did not end when he treated John Wilkes Booth's broken leg in the early hours following Lincoln's assassination. In many ways, his most remarkable chapter was only beginning.
Convicted by the military commission that tried the Lincoln conspirators, Dr. Mudd was sentenced to life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson, a massive brick fortress on a lonely island in the Dry Tortugas, nearly a thousand miles from his Maryland home. There, he joined three other men convicted in the Lincoln conspiracy trial, along with hundreds of soldiers and military prisoners serving sentences for murder, robbery, desertion, and other serious crimes. Life inside the fortress was governed by harsh discipline, where a standing order authorized guards to shoot prisoners who refused to obey commands.
Determined to regain his freedom, Mudd attempted a daring escape by secretly boarding a visiting supply ship. When the attempt failed, he was captured and confined for months in the fort's dungeon.
Then the prison itself became a death trap.
In the summer of 1867, a devastating yellow fever epidemic swept through Fort Jefferson. As soldiers, civilians, and the post surgeon succumbed to the disease, Dr. Mudd volunteered to care for the sick and dying. Working alongside a civilian physician from Key West, he treated patients until he himself contracted yellow fever and nearly died. His courage during the epidemic transformed the opinions of many who had once regarded him only as one of Lincoln's convicted conspirators. When the epidemic ended, 300 soldiers signed a petition asking President Andrew Johnson to pardon him. Johnson granted the pardon in 1869, concluding that Mudd's conviction rested on aiding Booth's escape rather than participating in the assassination itself.
Drawing on extensive research at the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Maryland State Archives, the Maryland Center for History and Culture, Fort Jefferson, and other historical collections, historian Robert K. Summers reconstructs this extraordinary story through contemporary accounts and primary sources.
More than a biography, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd at Fort Jefferson is the definitive history of Mudd's years in prison. Readers accompany him from the voyage to the Dry Tortugas through the daily realities of life inside Fort Jefferson, his failed escape, the terrifying yellow fever epidemic, and his eventual return home. The book also includes a gallery of rare historic photographs and an extensive appendix containing important contemporary documents and interviews that illuminate one of the most enduring controversies in American history.
Whether you believe Dr. Mudd was guilty, innocent, or something in between, his imprisonment at Fort Jefferson remains one of the most compelling stories to emerge from the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's assassination-a story of punishment, survival, courage, and redemption.
For Dr. Mudd's complete life story before and after Fort Jefferson, see The Assassin's Doctor: A Biography of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd at Amazon.
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