Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd was the physician who treated assassin John Wilkes Booth’s broken left leg after Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln. Booth had broken his leg when he leapt onto the stage from the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre after shooting Lincoln in the back of his head. Booth then fled on horseback.
Whitman wrote two volumes of poetry about the Civil War: Drum Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum Taps (1866), after witnessing first-hand the suffering, bravery, wastefulness, heroism, and tragedy of war while working in hospitals during the Civil War.