During the American Civil War, in the summer of 1864, the young actor John Wilkes Booth conceived a plan to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln and carry him to Richmond, Virginia where the Confederate government would presumably free the President in exchange for the Union’s release of captured Confederate soldiers. When this impractical plan was abandoned a few months later, Booth determined to assassinate the President, and did so at Washington’s Ford’s Theater on Good Friday evening, April 14, 1865.

Booth broke his leg while fleeing from the theater, and after riding all night through Southern Maryland, stopped just before dawn at the farm of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd who set his broken leg. He left the Mudd farm later that day, but a week and a half later Booth was cornered and killed in Virginia.

A large number of people were arrested during the Government’s investigation of the assassination, but ultimately only eight of these, including Dr. Mudd, were put on trial for being part of Booth’s conspiracy. All eight were found guilty. Four were hung. The other four, including Dr. Mudd, were sent to Fort Jefferson, a military prison located on a small Gulf of Mexico island about 70 miles west of Key West, Florida. In 1869, President Andrew Johnson pardoned Dr. Mudd who returned home to his family and farm and lived for another fourteen years until his death in 1883.

Historians generally agree that Dr. Mudd had nothing to do with planning or carrying out the assassination of President Lincoln. However, most also agree that he was guilty of helping Booth escape by not alerting the authorities to Booth’s presence at his farm. General August V. Kautz, one of the nine members of the Military Commission that tried the eight alleged conspirators, said it clearly: 

“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 was pardoned in part because of his work during a 1867 yellow fever epidemic at Fort Jefferson. Many soldiers survived the epidemic only because of Dr. Mudd’s tireless work. Towards the end of the epidemic, Dr. Mudd himself contracted yellow fever and almost died. When the epidemic had finally run its course, 300 soldiers at Fort Jefferson signed a petition testifying to his bravery and asking President Johnson to pardon him. The petition said in part:

“He inspired the hopeless with courage, and by his constant presence in the midst of danger and infection, regardless of his own life, tranquilized the fearful and desponding.”