Early the next morning on April 15, 1865 Booth and David Herold, an accomplice in the assassination, had made their escape into Maryland where they called on Dr. Samuel Mudd to treat Booth’s broken leg. Mudd was an acquaintance of the well-known and popular actor Booth. Booth and Herold then stayed briefly at the Mudd house before continuing on in their escape to Virginia. John Wilkes Booth was eventually shot dead by pursuing Union soldiers in a Virginia barn.

Barnes&Noble: Union vs Dr. Mudd

In 1865, a jury of Army officers convicted Mudd and seven others in the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. David Herold was one of the four hanged (along with Mary E. Surratt, Lewis T. Powell, and George A. Atzerodt) on July 7, 1865 for conspiracy in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Dr. Samuel Mudd was found guilty of conspiracy but was spared the hangman’s noose by one jury vote. Dr. Samuel Mudd was sentenced to life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson. Fort Jefferson, with sweltering conditions of heat and humidity, was a harsh place to be imprisoned, it being approximately 70 miles west of Key West, Florida in the Dry Tortugas. President Andrew Johnson pardoned Mudd in February, 1869 and on March 8, 1869 Dr. Samuel Mudd was freed from the prison. During Dr. Mudd’s time at Fort Jefferson he helped stop the spread of a yellow fever epidemic that had ravaged through the prison.

There has been continuing controversy about whether or not Dr. Samuel Mudd was involved in the assassination conspiracy, or was only a country doctor helping a man with a broken leg. Doctor Mudd’s guilt or innocence, in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is still debated.

In 1992 an administrative board of the Army made the recommendation that Mudd’s conviction be expunged because Mudd was a civilian. However, following Army secretaries and a federal judge, turned down this recommendation. A court decision in November, 2002 dismissed an attempt to have expunged the 1860s military commission conviction of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Thomas Mudd is the grandson of Samuel Mudd, and he plans to seek a review of the 2002 court decision by the full appeals court. If this fails, Thomas Mudd intends to ask the United States Supreme Court to intervene.

Barnes&Noble: The Fall and Redemption of Dr Samuel A Mudd

Dr. Samuel Mudd was absolved by President James Earl "Jimmy" Carter in 1979 of involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. It is a curiosity that the former television anchorman Roger Mudd, is related to Dr. Samuel Mudd.

Walt Whitman’s brother George Washington Whitman, fought for the Union during the Civil War and was injured at Fredericksburg in 1862. Walt went to Virginia in search of his hospitalized brother and was relieved to discover that George’s wounds were not serious. The wounded, the conditions, and the plentiful misery of a Civil War hospital, led Walt Whitman to volunteer at age forty-two to be a nursing aid, he served for over three years in this capacity.

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.

Barnes&Noble: Walt Whitman’s Civil War

Observations of poet Walt Whitman, in 1865: ’’Unnamed, unknown, remain and still remain the bravest soldiers. Our manliest, our boys, our hardy darlings: no picture gives them. Likely, the typical one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands) crawls aside to some bush-clump or ferny tuft on receiving his death-shot; there, sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass, and soil with red blood; the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by; and there, haply with pain and suffering…the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him; the eyes glaze in death;…and there, at last the Bravest Soldier, crumbles in Mother Earth, unburied and unknown.’’ Walt Whitman is famous for two poem elegies he wrote about President Abraham Lincoln after Lincoln was assassinated, these poems are: ’’O Captain! My Captain!’’ and ’’When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom’d.’’ Not even the most casual student of the Civil War should ignore these two Walt Whitman poems. Below you will find the first of these two poems.

O Captain! My Captain!

by Walt Whitman

II.

III.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won!

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

As President Abraham Lincoln is enjoying a play at Ford’s Theatre the evening of April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth sneaks up behind the president and shoots him in the head. Lincoln dies early the next morning. After Booth escapes from Ford’s Theatre, Federal cavalry and troops throughout Maryland and Virginia pursue the fugitive assassin.

Early the morning of April 26, John Wilkes Booth is nearing his fate. Booth and David Herold (an accomplice in the assassination) are hiding in a tobacco barn owned by Richard H. Garrett near Bowling Green, Virginia. Federal troops commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger surround the tobacco barn and Conger orders the suspects to come out and surrender. David Herold gives up and is quickly taken into custody.

Barnes&Noble: Manhunt

For a few hours, John Wilkes Booth stages a standoff while he rants from within the barn. To force Booth out of Garrett’s tobacco barn, Conger orders his troops to set the barn on fire. As the barn burns, Sergeant Boston Corbett sees an opportunity and shoots Booth in the neck. The paralyzed and mortally injured assassin is drug from the burning barn to the porch of the Garrett house. Around seven in the morning, John Wilkes Booth dies on the Garrett porch.

"Useless! Useless!"

As he lay dying, Booth looked at his hands and spoke those last words.

President Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865 at 7:22 in the morning.

Upon Abraham Lincoln’s death, it was reported Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said; "Now he belongs to the ages." Abraham Lincoln’s assassination was a tragedy. The nation was in mourning.

Barnes&Noble: They Have Killed Papa Dead

Some in the defeated South were joyous over the news of Lincoln’s death…it had been a long, hard, bitter, and bloody war.

Others in the South realized they had lost a friend on their path to reconstruction and healing after the war. Lincoln’s death was not good news for the people of the South. Some leaders coming to power after Lincoln’s death would not have Lincoln’s conciliatory ideas for the South.

Almost immediately after his assassination, discussion begins for a memorial of some type for President Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. was dedicated in 1922. The Lincoln memorial has 36 columns to signify the number of states that were in the Union during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. Carved into the marble of the south wall of the memorial is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

The Lincoln Memorial faces toward Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s former home of Arlington House, located across the Potomac River.

On April 14, President Abraham Lincoln spent his day visiting with callers and attending a Cabinet meeting. Among those at the Cabinet meeting was General Ulysses Grant, Lincoln explained to Grant that he was having a recurring dream about a ship "moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore." Now that the Civil War was over, topics of discussion at the meeting included the problems of reconstruction, and the treatment of former Confederate leaders.

That evening, the Lincolns were planning a visit to Ford’s Theatre to see the play Our American Cousin. Lincoln asked General Grant to be his guest that night, but Grant declined the president’s invitation. Instead, Lincoln and his wife Mary would attend the performance of Our American Cousin accompanied by two other guests, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Miss Clara Harris.

Previously, President Lincoln had found some brief refuge from the Civil War when he attended a play at Ford’s Theatre on November 9, 1863. Lincoln then saw a play named The Marble Heart, cast in this play was a young and well-regarded actor named John Wilkes Booth. Booth would not be acting in Our American Cousin on the evening of April 14, but he too, planned to be at Ford’s Theatre during the play’s performance.

That evening, the Lincolns, Major Henry Rathbone, and Miss Clara Harris, were all enjoying the play. Two of the play’s characters exchange the following lines during the third act:

Mrs. Montchessington: I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, that you are not used to the manners of good society.

Asa Trenchard: Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal – you sockdologizing old mantrap!

After the above lines in the performance of the play, the audience would always burst out loudly in laughter. John Wilkes Booth knew that in this scene of the play, the audience’s loud laughter would happen as if on cue. At this moment, Booth used a .44 caliber derringer to shoot President Lincoln in the back of his head at nearly point blank range. Booth slashed Major Rathbone with a knife, and then leapt onto the stage as he shouted; "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants"). Booth broke his leg as he landed on the stage, but he escaped out of Ford’s Theatre to a back alley, and a waiting horse. All this occurred at about 10:15 P.M. It was Good Friday.

Barnes&Noble: Tried by War

President Lincoln was unconscious, but still alive. He was moved across the street from Ford’s Theatre to the Peterson house. Taken into a back bedroom, the six-foot-four inches tall Lincoln was placed diagonally upon a bed that was too short for him. President Lincoln’s head wound was very severe. There was nothing much that could be done for the president now, except to watch and wait.