Townsend Article about Dr. Mudd

[bob_summers]

Note that Dr. George Mudd's recollection that nobody in Bryantown on Saturday afternoon, April 15th, knew that the President had been assassinated by John Wilkes Booth is contradicted by Lieutenant Dana's testimony, which was:

Lieutenant David B. Dana:

By the Judge Advocate:

Will you state whether or not, on the day following the murder of the President, you went in pursuit of the assassin in the direction of Bryantown?

Yes. sir: I did.

Will you state at what hour you and your men arrived there on that day?

I had sent a guard of four men ahead of me into the town; and they kept ahead of me all the way to the town. They arrived there twenty minutes or half an hour before I did. I arrived there near one o`c.lock that Saturday afternoon, the Saturday following the assassination.

Will you state whether or not, on your arrival, the intelligence of the assassination was spread through the town?

Yes. sir: it was. I communicated the intelligence to the citizens, and also told the name of the party assassinating the President.

Did you mention as the assassin the name of Booth?

Yes, sir: J. Wilkes Booth. Some of the citizens asked me if I knew for a certainty that it was him; and I told them, “Yes: as near as a person could know anything."

Are you or not quite certain that at that hour, say one o’clock, it was known throughout that village?

As early as a quarter-past one, it was known all through the village that the President had been assassinated, and who the assassin was.