Mudd, Samuel Alexander

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Samuel Alexander Mudd
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Children
    9
    Family
    Henry Lowe Mudd (father), Sarah Ann Reeves Mudd (mother), Sarah Frances Dyer (wife)
    Education
    Other
    Other Education
    Frederick College, MD; Georgetown College; Baltimore School Medicine
    Occupation
    Farmer or Planter
    Doctor, Dentist or Nurse
    Relation to Slavery
    Slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Democratic

    Samuel Alexander Mudd (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Since Mudd's death, historians have argued over Mudd's innocence, and many of his descendants have tried to restore his reputation. In 1990 the doctor's grandson Richard Dyer Mudd requested that Mudd's case be reviewed by the Army Board of Correction of Military Records, which two years later recommended that the conviction be removed from army records because he was tried improperly, before a military commission instead of in civilian court. The recommendation was rebuffed by army administration, and in 1997 Richard Mudd brought the issue before the U.S. District Court in Washington, which again left the decision with the army. In March 2000 the army ruled that the military commission was justified in trying and convicting the alleged conspirator, citing Ex Parte Quirin (1942), which held that a "military trial was justified . . . [for] those accused of committing offenses against the law of war" (Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, ed. Kermit L. Hall [1992], p. 697). Mudd's case fit this definition, they ruled, because the assassination of the president was essentially a military act and the city of Washington, D.C., was at the time under "threat of invasion." Unfortunately the army's ruling shed no new light on Mudd's guilt or innocence, and the movement by Richard Mudd to clear his grandfather's name continues: two newsletters devoted to the efforts to exonerate Mudd still regularly circulate. But, as the truth ostensibly remains unrevealed more than a century later, what role, if any, Mudd played in the assassination of the president who held the country together during its most difficult time will likely never be known for certain.
    Stacey Hamilton, "Mudd, Samuel Alexander," American National Biography Online, June 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/20/20-01833.html.
    Date Event
    Fugitive John Wilkes Booth rides into Maryland and reaches the farm of Dr. Samuel Mudd at four a.m.
    John Wilkes Booth and David Herold continue their flight across Maryland then hide in a remote thicket
    Doctor Samuel Mudd, who treated and sheltered John Wilkes Booth, is arrested at his Maryland farm
    In Washington, John Wilkes Booth's accused fellow plotters are transferred to the Old Penitentiary for trial
    In Washington, President Johnson orders a military trial for John Wilkes Booth's accused fellow plotters
    In Washington, the officers of the military court for John Wilkes Booth's accused fellow plotters are named
    In Washington, membership of the military court for John Wilkes Booth's accused fellow plotters is adjusted
    In Washington, the accused Lincoln Assassination plotters all plead not guilty before their military court
    In Washington's Old Penitentiary, the taking of evidence in the Lincoln conspiracy trial begins
    - In Washington's Old Penitentiary, the taking of evidence in the Lincoln conspiracy trial continues
    In Washington's Old Penitentiary, the taking of evidence in the Lincoln conspiracy trial concludes
    - In Washington's Old Penitentiary, final arguments are being made in the Lincoln conspiracy trial
    In Washington's Old Penitentiary, the Commission in the Lincoln conspiracy trial begin their deliberations
    In Washington, President Andrew Johnson approves the sentences passed down to the Lincoln conspirators
    In Washington's Old Penitentiary, the Lincoln conspirators are told their fate in their cells
    President Johnson orders the surviving Lincoln conspirators to serve their sentences off the coast of Florida
    Samuel Mudd makes a vain attempt to escape from his life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson off the Florida coast
    How to Cite This Page: "Mudd, Samuel Alexander ," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/6290.