Samuel Mudd

Samuel Mudd

Samuel Alexander Mudd (born December 20, 1833 in Charles County , Maryland , † January 10, 1883 ibid) was an American doctor who medically treated the assassin of US President Abraham Lincoln , John Wilkes Booth , and was accused of co-conspiracy as a result has been.

Youth and education

Samuel, as he was commonly known, was born the fourth of ten children to plantation owner Henry Lowe Mudd and his wife Sarah Ann Reeves. The great farm called Oak Hill was about 30 miles from Washington, DC . After graduating from Georgetown College , Mudd enrolled at the University of Maryland .

After graduation in 1856, he returned to Charles County, where he first practiced as a doctor before he married his childhood sweetheart , Sarah Dyer, on November 26, 1857 and bought his own farm at Bryantown . The marriage resulted in nine children.

Involvement in the assassination attempt

Mudd had always been an advocate of slavery and had supported the Confederate Army during the War of Civilizations. He was known as an active supporter of the southern states .

This put him in connection with John Wilkes Booth, whom he first met on November 13, 1864, and this may also have put him in connection with the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln. After the assassination attempt on the president on April 14, 1865, Booth broke his left during the escape from the theater fibula . Accompanied by David Herold , Booth arrived at Mudd's house the following day. The doctor fixed the bones, splinted and bandaged the leg and called for a carpenter to get the injured person a couple of crutches .

Prosecution, conviction and imprisonment

Mudd was later captured by the police on charges of conspiracy and murder of Lincoln. During the trial, Mudd denied that he recognized Booth during treatment, which did not necessarily add to his credibility.

On May 1, 1865, the new president, Andrew Johnson , ordered a commission of nine officers to investigate the crimes of the conspirators. The real trial began on May 10th: Mary Surratt , Lewis Powell (often referred to as Lewis Payne), George Atzerodt , David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Edman Spangler and Samuel Arnold were all involved in the conspiracy charged with murdering Lincoln.

On June 29, 1865, Mudd was found guilty of co-conspiracy. He escaped the death penalty by just one vote and was sentenced to life imprisonment. While four other of the defendants were hanged in Washington on July 7, 1865, Mudd and three others went to Fort Jefferson Prison . When yellow fever broke out there in 1867 , the prison doctor died . Mudd agreed to take over his position.

Pardon and rehabilitation

As early as March 1, 1869, Andrew Johnson pardoned the doctor, which again exposed the president to the charge of neglecting the interests of the north in the course of his reconciliation policy towards the south after the war.

In 1877 he ran for a seat in the Maryland House of Representatives to no avail as a member of the Democrats . Mudd died of pneumonia at the age of 49 .

Others

• His grandson Richard Mudd (1901–2002) worked until his death at the age of 101 to rid his grandfather of the stigma of being a co-conspirator.
• The American idiom “His name is mud” (actually: “His name is mud” , but in a more figurative sense: “His name is dirt” ), true to the motto nomen est omen, to literally put the name of the person in question in the “dirt to pull ” , is contrary to earlier references to be seen in no connection with Mudd. Nevertheless, the phrase reappeared slightly modified in the lurid title of a book that tried to counter the rehabilitation attempts of the Mudds family relatively successfully.

literature

• See The Life of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd (ed. By his daughter, N. Mudd, 1906). (More or less a justification)
• Edward J. Steers: His Name Is Still Mudd: The Case Against Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd , 1997, ISBN 1-57747-019-2 (More or less a justification for the judgment; Steers tries to find Mudd completely guilty)

Film adaptations

• 1936 filmed director John Ford under the title The Prisoner of Shark Island (German title: Der Gefangene der Haifischinsel ) the story of Mudds (played by Warner Baxter ) from the assassination attempt to the end of his captivity. However, the plot does not match the historical facts at all in many places and depicts Mudd completely as an innocent victim.
• There was also a TV adaptation in 1980 ( The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd ) with Dennis Weaver as Mudd.

Web links

• Samuel Mudd in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Dr. Mudd and the Lincoln Conspiracy
• Dr. Samuel Mudd

supporting documents

1. ^ Edward J. Steers: His Name Is Still Mudd: The Case Against Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd , 1997.