During the latter part of the American Civil War (1861-1865) the young actor John Wilkes Booth conceived a plan to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln and carry him to Richmond, Virginia. He believed the Union Government would release a large number of captured Confederate soldiers in order to secure the release of the President. Booth recruited a small number of co-conspirators to help him, but the group was never able to execute Booth’s impractical plan. When Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army in early April 1865, Booth realized the war was over. Frustrated and angry, he decided to assassinate the President, and did so at Washington’s Ford’s Theater on Good Friday evening, April 14, 1865.
Booth claimed in his diary that he broke his leg when jumping to the theater stage after shooting Lincoln. Other evidence suggests he actually broke it later that night when his horse fell on a muddy country road after leaving Washington. It either case, he needed medical attention. He and an accomplice, David Herold, 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.
Many people were arrested during the Government’s investigation of the assassination, but ultimately only eight of these, including Dr. Mudd, were put on trial. All eight were found guilty. The four who had actually helped plan and participate in the assassination 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. General August V. Kautz, one of the nine members of the Military Commission that tried the eight alleged conspirators, said:
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.
Military commissions made up their own rules, but they all demanded a simple majority vote for conviction. This is very different from civilian juries, which required a unanimous verdict. This loosening of the rule is precisely what led the government to start using military commissions in the first place. They didn't think they could get a unanimous jury very often.
Dr. Mudd must have gotten five "guilty" votes, or else he would have been found not guilty. A sixth vote would have been a two-thirds majority, which automatically carried the death penalty. Because this was automatic, there was no penalty phase. Evidently some of the officers on the military commission felt they could not vote to acquit Mary Surratt, but they still didn't feel she should have been hanged. That's why they signed the petition for clemency.
Some writers are fond of saying that Dr. Mudd missed the death penalty by one vote. This is true, but he missed an outright acquittal by a single vote as well. If we may credit the letters of Thomas Ewing, the commission dispensed with seven defendants in short order, but took most of a second day haggling over the fate of Dr. Mudd. I suspect there was a lot of deal making in order to get a conviction. As you may know, Dr. Mudd was listed as a witness on the night before the start of the trial. This meant that the decision to indict him was made at the last minute. I think this was Stanton's decision, based on the capture of Willie Jett. The testimony of Mudd would have gone to prove that David Herold had left Booth during the escape, then rejoined him of his own accord. Unfortunately, Stanton realized at the last minute that Willie Jett could prove the same point, so the testimony of Dr. Mudd was not needed. I don't think that Stanton, Holt, or anyone else in the government considered Mudd a "key" conspirator, but perhaps a reluctant participant in the plot.
Joseph Holt actually wrote a book for the guidance of military commissions during the war, but in some cases the commission members had no idea that it existed. It is still almost completely unknown. I was only able to track down one copy, and found that Holt had violated his own rules whenever it suited him. For example, all civilians convicted by military commission were supposed to serve their sentences in Albany, New York. That was the original intent with Dr. Mudd, but of course, it was changed after the trial.
Unfortunately, none of the commission members left any real inside information about the deliberations. Lew Wallace's papers have some interesting tidbits -- such as Joseph Holt's gift of jewelry to Wallace's wife, and the general's own preoccupation with starting a war against Mexico -- but otherwise it all seems to have been kept confidential. Even those who signed the petition for clemency said almost nothing about it during the 1873 public controversy between Holt and Johnson. We get a few small glimpses from the private letters of Gen. Thomas Ewing, who complained about Holt sitting in on the deliberations, but again this is all we have. Maybe more will eventually turn up.
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. Dr. Mudd was pardoned in large part because of his work during a 1867 yellow fever epidemic at his military prison, 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 that testified to Dr. Mudd’s bravery and asked 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.
After his release from prison, Dr. Mudd returned home to his wife and children. He lived fourteen more years, dying from pneumonia in 1883 at the age of 49.
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, provides us his exclusive explanation of how the Military Commission voted: