Another researcher sent me a link to the following, hilarious, web comic regarding the Lincoln assassination. The entire comic is 38 pages long and really well done for a comic. It had me in stitches several times. I would put the whole comic here if I could, but the language is R rated at some points. Still, it’s definitely worth sharing. Click one of the examples below or the link that follows to read the comic.
Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a Portuguese journalist named Pedro Castro. He kindly informed me that he had written an article for his magazine, Sabado, regarding the mysterious Portuguese ship captain who was imprisoned as one of the conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln and Secretary Seward. His article is only the second, to my knowledge, that truly explores the exploits of Joao M. Celestino. Moreover, Mr. Castro uncovers a new piece of information from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Lisbon explaining a point that author Philip Van Doren Stern found very mysterious – why did Celestino’s lawyer write to President Johnson four months after Celestino’s release with the following cryptic message:
“The case is a peculiar one and we only ask that you would appoint some good person to take the evidence and say what compensation Mr Celestino is entitled to and to order the same paid out of the Secret Service fund.”
Click on the following link to read Pedro Castro’s article, “Conspiracy: The Portuguese arrested in connection with Lincoln’s assassination”
I visited Congressional Cemetery again today. My main purpose was to visit conspirator David Herold, but I also took the time to track down a few more people related to the assassination that I hadn’t before. Consider this post an addendum to my previous “Jaunt“.
First off, I tracked down all of David Herold’s sisters. Fortuitous for me, all of them are buried here at Congressional:
Mary Ann (Herold) Nelson
Margaret Cecelia (Herold) Rockwell
Catharine Virginia (Herold) Brown
Alice King (Herold) Earnshaw
Georgia Isabel (Herold) Earnshaw
Emma Frances (Herold) Keilholtz
Elizabeth Jane Herold. Elizabeth is buried right on top of her unmarked brother, David.
From there I went to see a few other individuals.
William Francis Walsh was a pharmacist near the Navy Yard. David Herold was employed by Walsh for 11 months until he quit in order to have more time to go hunting.
As his descriptive stone states, Charles Forbes was Abraham Lincoln’s footman and was present at Ford’s the night of the assassination.
John E. Buckingham was the doorman at Ford’s and later wrote a book about his souvenirs of the event.
William Wood was involved in the search for Booth and Herold and was the superintendent of the Old Capitol Prison when Mary Surratt and Dr. Mudd were there.
Those are all the assassination related graves we saw at Congressional Cemetery today. There are still many more people involved with the great drama buried at Congressional so don’t be surprised if there’s another jaunt in the future.
This post is just a friendly reminder to all the email followers of this blog that the much anticipated docudrama “Killing Lincoln” debuts tonight at 8pm EST on National Geographic Channel! Make sure to watch it and post your thoughts and comments about it here or on Roger Norton’s Lincoln Discussion Symposium.
While I’m waiting for the debut, I’m checking out the show’s official website which contains interviews with the cast, clips from the film, and production stills. National Geographic has also created a phenomenal interactive timeline of Booth’s conspiracy and manhunt that you absolutely need to check out!
So remember, “Killing Lincoln” tonight at 8 pm EST on NatGeo. Don’t miss it!
Our newest Picture Gallery on BoothieBarn.com is of the conspirator, Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd. When John Wilkes Booth arrived at this 31 year-old physician’s home in Charles County, MD during the morning hours of April 15th, 1865, it was his fourth face-to-face meeting with the good doctor that we know of. On a previous meeting between Mudd and Booth in Washington, Dr. Mudd introduced the young actor to another man who would feature prominently in the conspiracy to abduct Lincoln, John H. Surratt, Jr. After the assassination, Booth sought Dr. Mudd specifically to help set his broken leg. Mudd did so, and Booth and Herold spent the daylight hours of April 15th on the Mudd property. Dr. Mudd claimed ignorance of the wounded man’s identity and stated to investigators that he did not hear about the assassination of Lincoln until he made a trip into Bryantown that day. According to Mudd, upon his return from Bryantown the two men were already departing from his house.
Though there has been considerable effort put forth, especially by his descendants, to portray Dr. Mudd as an innocent country doctor fulfilling his hippocratic oath, the truth is far more complicated and not as innocent. Dr. Mudd’s involvement in Booth’s conspiracy is probably best stated by his own lawyer, Frederick Stone: “His prevarications were painful. He had given his whole case away by not trusting even his counsel or neighbors or kinfolks. It was a terrible thing to extricate him from the toils he had woven about himself. He had denied knowing Booth when he knew him well. He was undoubtedly accessory to the abduction plot, though he may have supposed it would never come to anything. He denied knowing Booth when he came to his house when that was preposterous. He had even been intimate with Booth.”
The Dr. Samuel Mudd photo gallery contains images relating to Dr. Mudd himself. Additional galleries will come later to focus on specific places in Mudd’s life like the Mudd house and Fort Jefferson. I hope you enjoy the new picture gallery about Dr. Mudd, and feel free to send any other pictures you might feel would be relevant to this gallery to boothiebarn (at) gmail (dot) com.
Special thanks to Robert Summers for sharing two pictures of Dr. and Mrs. Mudd for the gallery!
On this date, February 8th, in 1869, President Andrew Johnson presented Mrs. Mudd with a pardon for her imprisoned husband.
Mrs. Mudd, her friends, and neighbors had worked diligently trying to get Dr. Mudd released from Ft. Jefferson for years. According to Mrs. Mudd, during her several meetings with Johnson, “He conveyed to me always the idea that he wanted to release my husband, but said more than once ‘the pressure on me is too great.'” Now, with less than a month left in his presidency, Johnson called Mrs. Mudd to the White House and gave her a pardon for Dr. Mudd. A month later, on March 8th, Dr. Mudd was released from custody at Fort Jefferson.
Here is President Johnson’s pardon of Dr. Mudd in full, courtesy of Robert Summers’ impeccable Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Research Site:
“Andrew Johnson
President of the United States of America.To all to Whom these Presents shall come. Greeting:
Whereas, on the twenty-ninth day of June in the year 1865, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was by the judgment of a Military Commission, convened and holden at the City of Washington, in part convicted, and in part acquitted, of the specification wherein he was inculpated in the charge for the trial of which said Military Commission was so convened and held, and which specification in its principal allegation against him, was and is in the words and figures following, to wit:
And in further prosecution of said conspiracy, the said Samuel A. Mudd did, at Washington City and within the Military Department and military lines aforesaid, on or before the sixth day of March, A. D. 1865 and on divers other days and times between that day and the twentieth day of April A. D. 1865, advise, encourage, receive, entertain, harbor and conceal, aid and assist, the said John Wilkes Booth, David E. Herold, Lewis Payne, John H. Surratt, Michael O’Laughlen, George A. Atzerodt, Mary E. Surratt and Samuel Arnold and their confederates, with knowledge of the murderous and traitorous conspiracy aforesaid, and with intent to aid, abet, and assist them in the execution thereof, and in escaping from justice after the murder of the said Abraham Lincoln, in pursuance of said conspiracy in manner aforesaid:
And whereas, upon a consideration and examination of the record of said trial and conviction and of the evidence given at said trial, I am satisfied that the guilt found by the said judgment against the Samuel A. Mudd was of receiving, entertaining, harboring, and concealing John Wilkes Booth and David E. Herold, with the intent to aid, abet and assist them in escaping from justice after the assassination of the late President of the United States, and not of any other or greater participation or complicity in said abominable crime;
And whereas, it is represented to me by respectable and intelligent members of the medical profession, that the circumstances of the surgical aid to the escaping assassin and the imputed concealment of his flight are deserving of a lenient construction as within the obligations of professional duty, and thus inadequate evidence of a guilty sympathy with the crime or the criminal;
And whereas, in other respects the evidence, imputing such guilty sympathy or purpose of aid in defeat of justice, leaves room for uncertainty as to the true measure and nature of the complicity of the said Samuel A. Mudd in the attempted escape of said assassins;
And whereas, the sentence imposed by said Military Commission upon the said Samuel A. Mudd was that he be imprisoned at hard labor for life, and the confinement under such sentence was directed to be had in the military prison at Dry Tortugas, Florida, and the said prisoner has been hitherto, and now is, suffering the infliction of such sentence;
And whereas, upon occasion of the prevalence of the Yellow Fever at that military station, and the death by that pestilence of the medical officer of the Post, the said Samuel A. Mudd devoted himself to the care and cure of the sick, and interposed his courage and his skill to protect the garrison, otherwise without adequate medical aid, from peril and alarm, and thus, as the officers and men unite in testifying, saved many valuable lives and earned the admiration and the gratitude of all who observed or experienced his generous and faithful service to humanity;
And whereas, the surviving families and friends of the Surgeon and other officers who were the victims of the pestilence earnestly present their dying testimony to the conspicuous merit of Dr. Mudd’s conduct, and their own sense of obligation to him and Lieut. Zabriskie and two hundred and ninety nine noncommissioned officers and privates stationed at the Dry Tortugas have united in presenting to my attention the praiseworthy action of the prisoner and in petitioning for his pardon;
And whereas the Medical Society of Hartford County, Maryland, of which he was an associate, have petitioned for his pardon, and thirty nine members of the Senate and House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States have also requested his pardon;
Now, therefore be it known that I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant to the said Dr. Samuel A. Mudd a full and unconditional pardon.
In testimony thereof, I have hereunto signed my name and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Eighth day of February, A. D. (Seal) 1869, and the Independence of the United States the ninety third.
ANDREW JOHNSON, By the President”
Some recent advocates of Dr. Mudd have tried to use this pardon as proof that Dr. Mudd was wholly innocent of the crimes against him. However a pardon is not that same as being exonerated. Exoneration is when one is completely absolved from blame for a wrongdoing. A pardon is when one is forgiven for a wrongdoing. Dr. Mudd was offered and accepted a pardon. To accept a pardon is to accept the guilt of the wronging and to be forgiven for it.
In my eyes, Dr. Mudd earned his pardon due to his assistance during the Yellow Fever epidemic on the Fort. He risked his life helping the soldiers and prisoners of the fort during their illnesses and subsequently paid for his involvement with John Wilkes Booth.
References:
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Research Site
I’m pleased to announce that there are four new galleries in the Picture Galleries section of the site. All four of them consist of drawings and engravings regarding John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on April 14th, 1865. Instead of putting all the drawings of the events that took place at Ford’s together, I’ve divided the actions into four sections.
| The first is called “Sneaking Up” and these images (only three at this point) show John Wilkes Booth in the moments before shooting Lincoln. | The next section is called “The Shot” and consists of the many images of John Wilkes Booth pulling the trigger of his single shot derringer. |
| The third section is entitled “The Leap“. These drawings show John Wilkes Booth’s leap from the president’s box after shooting Lincoln and wounding Major Henry Rathbone | The last section demonstrating Booth’s havoc at Ford’s Theatre is called, “On the Stage“. These drawing show Booth brandishing his bloodied knife while making his way across the stage into the wings. From here Booth exited the back of the Theatre and escaped onto Baptist Alley. |
I hope you enjoy these new additions to the site.
Here’s a quick photo post from my phone before I head back from a day in Baltimore. I stopped by three Baltimorean cemeteries today, Green Mount, St. Paul’s, and Loudon Park. This was my first visit to the last two. I brought along my camera but did not charge it before I left. It died after taking pictures of the Booth plot in Green Mount. What follows are some the pictures I had to take on my phone. I hope you like them:
The Booth family plot in Green Mount.
Samuel Arnold’s grave in Green Mount. His mother is buried in the same plot.
The O’Laughlen family marker in Green Mount. Michael is buried here with his father, infant brother, sister and probably other family members not marked on the stone.
The unmarked plot of the Taubert family in St. Paul’s cemetery in Druid Hill Park. Here is where family members of George Atzerodt are buried including his mother, sister, brother in law, and his nieces and nephews. It was once thought that George Atzerodt was also buried here, but recent research on this site has determined this to be incorrect.
Section and the approximate area in which John C. Atzerodt is buried in Loudon Park Cemetery. John was George’s brother and a detective who investigated his brother’s involvement. John is the one who received his brother’s body upon its release in 1869. The section in which John is buried is one of individual plots and sparsely marked. A thorough search of the area was conducted but no marker for John was discovered.
LincolnConspirators.com 
Recent Comments