Dr. Mudd: The Deceptive Doctor, Or Not?

7 Pages 1752 Words

Introduction
John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head at
approximately 10:15 on Good Friday evening of April 14, 1865 while the
nation’s sixteenth President sat in a private box at Washington’s Ford’s
Theater watching a performance of the humorous Our American Cousin.
However, this event was only one small part of a much larger conspiracy.
At the same time that Booth was shooting Lincoln, other conspirators
were attempting to kill Andrew Johnson and William Seward. This much is
beyond dispute, but all of the events that took place after the shooting
with the conspirators are not (Mills 1). In all there were eight people
arrested, not including John Wilkes Booth. Booth was never officially
arrested for the assassination of President Lincoln because a soldier,
with the orders to take the killer alive, violated his orders and gunned
down Booth. The soldier who claimed that he shot Booth, Boston Corbett,
was never punished for disobeying his orders. The conspirators that
were charged for being a part of the plot planning to murder Vice
President Andrew Johnson were Mrs. Suratt, Lewis Powell, Herold, and
Atzerodt. All four of them were found guilty of treason and on July 7,
1865, were hanged. The others, including Samuel Arnold, Michael
O’Laughlin, Edman Spangler, and Dr. Mudd, were all charged with aiding
and abetting and all were given prison terms (Allen 2).
Is there any way that the government could have wrongly accused
innocent people of being involved with the conspiracy? Since Booth was
shot and killed before he could ever be arrested did the government use
Dr. Mudd as a scapegoat? Today, the question of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd’s
guilt or innocence is still lingering. Mudd’s present day relatives are
still trying to clear his name. Though they are having a lot of
trouble, they are still hoping that their tireless efforts will
eventually pay off. No one real...