His Name is Still Mudd: The Case Against Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd
by EdwarD Steers, Jr.
The case of Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd,
who was convicted in 1865 as an accomplice in the Lincoln murder
conspiracy, has in recent years taken on a life of its own. It
has become vogue to rally behind the good doctor, and join in
the efforts have him completely exonerated for his actions and
to have his reputation restored. This movement is the culmination
of a decades-long effort by Samuel Mudd's grandson, Richard Dyer
Mudd, to clear his family name. Along the way the younger Mudd,
now nearing his 100th year, has enlisted the aid of authors, legislators,
Members of Congress, and Presidents of the United States. Two
regularly published newsletters keep interested parties advised
of the status of the appeals being presented to clear Mudd's name.1
The efforts of these advocates have resulted in a number of actions
being taken. A plethora of books have been written defending Dr.
Mudd. The 1995 video Rewriting History: The Case of Dr. Samuel
A. Mudd casts a sympathetic eye on the Maryland physician.
Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan both sent letters to
Richard Mudd expressing their personal belief in Dr. Mudd's innocence.
The Michigan state legislature passed a resolution claiming that
Samuel Mudd did nothing illegal, and called upon federal authorities
to reverse his convictions.
In February 1993, a Moot Court of Military Appeal was convened
at the University of Richmond School of Law to hear an appeal
of the Mudd conviction. Representing Mudd were distinguished attorneys
F. Lee Bailey and Cadida Ewing Steel, the great-grand daughter
of Mudd's original lawyer, General Thomas Ewing. The three judge
panel delivered a unanimous decision, albeit on dissimilar grounds,
declaring that Mudd's conviction should be overturned and the
record expunged. To that end, a petition was presented to the
Army Board for the Correction of Military Records (ABCMR), seeking
to have Mudd's conviction formally removed from official military
record. The board agreed with the petitioners, and recommended
to the Secretary of the Army that the official record be altered
to reflect Mudd's innocence.
The Undersecretary designated by the Secretary of the Army to
rule on the recommendation refused to accede to the ABCMR's wishes.
When a new Presidential administration took office in 1993, the
new Undersecretary of the Army again refused to grant the recommendation
of the ABCMR. Still not satisfied with the governmental decision,
the pro-Mudd forces are now pursuing Congressional legislation
to force the Secretary of the Army to follow the ABCMR's
recommendations.
Yes, the vox populi of the masses seems to lean towards
letting Samuel Mudd off the historical hook for being a part of
the most notorious crime of the Nineteenth Century. His defenders
have thus far refused to admit defeat and have vowed to march
to the ends of the Earth to achieve their goal of complete exoneration
of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd.
However, public opinion is never unanimous, and many assassination
historians and scholars have disagreed with the popular notion
that Mudd was an innocent caught up in the midst of a witch hunt
in the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination. Now, Edward Steers,
Jr. has stepped forward to present the "other side"
of the Mudd story. In His Name Is Still Mudd: The Case Against
Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd Steers critically examines the facts
of the case and dispels the numerous mistaken notions that Mudd
was not guilty of wrongdoing in the conspiracy.
Those who are seeking to clear Mudd's name present two separate
arguments in his defense, both of which Steers addresses in this
book. The first argument is that Mudd was nothing but an innocent
country doctor abiding by his Hippocratic oath in treating a stranger
(John Wilkes Booth) who showed up at his door in the wee morning
hours of April 15, 1865. The second theme taken up by Mudd's apologists,
the one that seems to carry the most weight in recent years, is
that Mudd was tried and convicted by a military tribunal rather
than a civil court, and he was thereby denied due process and
the verdict should thus be set aside.
The evidence Steers' presents to answer the first claim, that
Mudd was the innocuous country doctor who did not recognize Booth,
is nothing short of overwhelming. Steers even goes so far as to
state that had the military commission had all the evidence that
historians have today, Mudd would not have received a sentence
of life imprisonment. Instead, Steers states, "the tribunal
would certainly have voted the death sentence for Mudd."
(70).
Steers demonstrates quite clearly that Mudd had strong connections
to the Confederate underground. He served as a courier for mail
being sent north from Richmond. The author deftly uses Mudd's
own statements, as well the statements made by others, to establish
that Mudd had indeed met John Wilkes Booth on three separate occasions
prior to his appearing at Mudd's house in the early hours of April
15, 1865. On one of those three occasions Booth was an overnight
house guest at Mudd's home.
Further, the evidence strongly suggests that Mudd was an instrumental
operative in the plan to kidnap President Lincoln and sprint him
off to Richmond. It was this conspiracy which, in time spawned
into the murder plot. It was Mudd who introduced John Wilkes Booth
to John Surratt, another participant in the kidnapping scheme.
Mudd also introduced Booth to Thomas Harbin, who would prove useful
in getting Booth and Herold across the Potomac River during their
flight from the authorities. Thus, the author shows that Mudd
was more than someone who aided Booth during his flight from justice,
but that he was in fact instrumental in the planning of the scheme
to kidnap Lincoln, which developed into the assassination plot.
Steers also ably demonstrates that Mudd did in fact cooperate
in helping Booth and Herold on their flight from the authorities,
and was thus an accessory after the fact to the murder.
And in an extremely cogent argument, Steers states that the case
against Samuel Mudd should simply end there. The full weight of
historical evidence indicates that he was guilty as chargedand
then some. But in the face of this overwhelming and damning evidence,
the pro-Mudd faction has taken up a new banner: that Mudd's name
should be cleared because of the forum in which he was adjudicated.
The effort now, it seems, is to get Mudd off on a procedural technicality;
that he was wrongly tried by a military court rather than a civil
one. But Steers addresses this issue as well, and again convinces
the reader that these claims are not valid.
The crux of the pro-Mudd faction's argument is that Mudd and his
co-conspiritors should have been tried by a civilian court and
not the military tribunal ordered by President Andrew Johnson.
To back up their assertion that the trial should have had a civilian
venue, they cite the 1866 Supreme Court decision known as ex
parte Milligan. In short, Milligan states that military
commissions lacked the authority to try civilian defendants in
areas not under military control, and where regularly constituted
civilian courts were open and functioning. In one concise and
well-argued chapter, Steers puts these claims of constitutional
conflict to rest.
He begins by tracing Lincoln's frequent suspension of the writ
of habeas corpus and the precedent for using military commissions
for trying individuals arrested and detained under the suspension
in the area in and around Washington, D.C. Some thirteen thousand
defendants were tried before two thousand different military commissions
during the period of the rebellion, without a single judgment
being overturned by an appellant court. Steers furthers points
out some very basic differences between the case of Dr. Mudd and
that of Lambdin Milligan, the defendant in the ex parte Milligan
decision. On the whole, this final chapter, in which the author
argues against the fundamental justification the pro-Mudd faction
is using to obtain absolution of Samuel A. Mudd, heralds the death
knell for the movement and reinforces the correctness of the Secretary
of the Army's decision to not expunge the conviction of Mudd as
a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.
I am ever reluctant to use the word "definitive" in
referring to a Lincoln book. This is particularly so in the case
of assassination titles, as there is probably more "junk
literature" on the assassination than any other single topic
within the scope of Lincolniana. Suffice it to say that in my
Lincoln library there are very few volumes on the "top shelf"
of the assassination section. Among them are books like The
Lincoln Murder Conspiracies by William Hanchett and The
Great American Myth by George Bryan. I have now made room
for His Name is Still Mudd: The Case Against Dr. Samuel Alexander
Mudd by Edward Steers, Jr., as I regard it as the final word
on the controversy surrounding the supposed innocence of Samuel
Alexander Mudd.
Available from:
Gettysburg Publications
P.O. Box 3031
Gettysburg, PA 17325
1 Dr. Samuel Mudd
Newsletter is published by George McNamara of Philadelphia, PA,
and
The Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Society, Inc. newsletter is edited by Louise
Mudd Arehart.
