Dr. Samuel Mudd at Fort Jefferson (Paperback). This item is unavailable.
Language: English
Published by Independently Published, 2020
- Softcover
- New
Seller: CitiRetail, Stevenage, United KingdomCitiRetail
AbeBooks seller since June 29, 2022
Condition: New
£ 16.49
Item description from seller
Paperback. 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. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.…
Seller Inventory # 9798684908781
- Title
- Dr. Samuel Mudd at Fort Jefferson (Paperback)
- Author
- Robert Summers
- Publisher
- Independently Published
- Publication year
- 2020
- Condition
- new
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 13
- 9798684908781
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd at Fort Jefferson
Convicted in the Lincoln assassination trial. Sentenced to life in a remote island fortress. Then an epidemic gave Dr. Samuel A. Mudd an unexpected chance for redemption.
In July 1865, four men convicted in connection with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln arrived under guard at Fort Jefferson, an immense brick fortress rising from a tiny island in the Dry Tortugas, nearly seventy miles west of Key West.
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was one of them.
His crime had begun with an early-morning knock on his door. Hours after shooting President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth arrived at Mudd's Maryland farmhouse with a broken leg. The country doctor treated him. Within weeks, Mudd was arrested, tried before a military commission, convicted of conspiracy, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
At Fort Jefferson, Mudd entered a world almost completely cut off from home. He endured oppressive tropical heat, hurricanes, insects, hard labor, and the uncertainty of whether he would ever see his wife and children again. After an unsuccessful escape attempt, he was placed in irons and confined with his fellow prisoners in the fort's dark and foul-smelling dungeon.
Then, in the summer of 1867, yellow fever came to Fort Jefferson.
The disease swept rapidly through the isolated garrison. When the post surgeon became ill and died, the imprisoned Maryland physician stepped forward to help care for the sick and dying. Mudd worked among the victims until he too contracted the disease and nearly died.
His actions transformed the way many of the soldiers at Fort Jefferson viewed him. Three hundred survivors signed a petition praising his courage and medical service and asking the government to restore him to liberty. The widow of the fort's surgeon also pleaded for his release, recalling Mudd's care for her husband, her son, and herself during the epidemic.
President Andrew Johnson finally pardoned Dr. Mudd in 1869.
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd at Fort Jefferson tells the remarkable story of those years—from the Lincoln assassination and conspiracy trial through Mudd's arrival at the Dry Tortugas, his attempted escape, imprisonment and daily life inside the fort, the catastrophic yellow-fever epidemic, and his eventual return to freedom.
The book also includes a photographic tour of Fort Jefferson, an examination of the famous 1936 motion picture The Prisoner of Shark Island, and a collection of important historical documents and later eyewitness accounts relating to Mudd and the assassination.
It is the story of a condemned prisoner, an isolated fortress, a deadly epidemic—and the extraordinary circumstances that gave one of the most controversial figures in the Lincoln assassination story a chance to save lives.
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