Food for Thought

[L Verge]

I'm glad that Bob Summers's version was cited here because the description of the reporter's group's journey to Dr. Mudd's is worth the read before they even knock on the door. Of course, as a local girl, I know exactly where most of the places he described were/are. He did get wrong information regarding the naming of the village of T.B., however.

"Reporters and lawyers didn't have to be allowed off the ship..." That doesn't mean that Mudd or any of the conspirators were allowed on the ship or ever allowed to talk with such folks.

My comment about the "sharks" was also posted in jest; I apologize if you took it seriously. I just wrote a Facebook blurb on the shark situation at Ft. Jefferson (as part of the recent salute to Shark Week). They did feast on garbage, etc., but also stray cats that some of the cruel guards would throw to them. There is one shark that is cited somewhere. They called him the "Provost Marshal," but he was so discombobulated (source's word) that most of the cats scared him away with their yowling and struggling to get out of the water! Fact or folklore, you decide.

I have never investigated the prison facility in Albany, NY, but I would suspect that it was under the jurisdiction of Unionist authorities also and a great deal more accessible to reporters, lawyers, and general public. Mrs. Mudd might even have been allowed a visit with her husband since trains ran to Albany, instead of boats? However, the Albany prison may not have been under control of the Union military like Ft. Jefferson. I would think that the element of military control would have been a big factor in Stanton's decision to switch prisons. It might also have been the issue of Mudd and the others being tried by a military tribunal, not a civilian court in the state where the crime was committed?? Again, someone who is not allergic to "law" like I can fill in the blanks here.

I admit that it has been many a year since I read Nettie Mudd Monroe's book, but the letters that he wrote home to Frankie are quite interesting - especially in reading his "personality." There is one that I remember where he almost seems to be blaming her for finding that darn boot under the bed and turning it over to the soldiers. After 60 years of studying the Lincoln assassination, I still have not made up my mind whether or not I would have liked Dr. Mudd.

[L Verge]

Thought I would check out the Albany Penitentiary history mentioned above before I resume reading Lincoln's Spies, I learned something new about why the first choice for the conspirators was a trip to the northern prison. It had opened in the 1840s and was a new experiment in criminal punishment. However, it was also the prison that received all criminals from Washington, D.C. who were sentenced to prison from 1862 on. That was the year that the D.C. penitentiary was taken over by the U.S. Arsenal and did not house prisoners again until the conspirators and trial were there in 1865.

http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2010/11...nitentiary

[mike86002000]

Laurie said:
I'm glad that Bob Summers's version was cited here because the description of the reporter's group's journey to Dr. Mudd's is worth the read before they even knock on the door. Of course, as a local girl, I know exactly where most of the places he described were/are. He did get wrong information regarding the naming of the village of T.B., however.

I had a part time job in T.B. while in high school, and heard that T. B. stood for Tom Brooke. Supposedly, he was required to name his place for tax purposes, and considered neighbor's more stylish choices pretentious.
I never heard that he died carving his initials into a beech tree. That sounds like an embellishment. I wonder what version you heard.
I should also mention that Dr. Mudd's dining room is separated from his parlor by "pocket doors" that slide into the partition, not folding doors. I am very familiar with the house, and can comment further.
When a writer carelessly gets details like this wrong it makes me question the accuracy of his whole story. Particularly since, in this case, Dr. Mudd said it was a distortion.
I agree that military control of Dry Tortugas was the most important factor in sending the conspirators there.
Mike

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Regarding Dr. Mudd's "likability": It's widely considered that "Frankie" "wore the pants in the family". Certainly, she had to, while he was in prison.
A docent remarked, within my hearing, that he was a "cry baby", constantly complaining about conditions at Dry Tortugas. I pointed out that it was a "Hell Hole", and he was sent there to die. Later I gave her a ride to the museum, in costume, in the back seat of my VW. Louise Arehart had "shot gun". The docent didn't seem to be a very happy person.
Mike

[L Verge]

(08-09-2019 03:00 PM)mike86002000 Wrote:  Laurie said:
I'm glad that Bob Summers's version was cited here because the description of the reporter's group's journey to Dr. Mudd's is worth the read before they even knock on the door. Of course, as a local girl, I know exactly where most of the places he described were/are. He did get wrong information regarding the naming of the village of T.B., however.

I had a part time job in T.B. while in high school, and heard that T. B. stood for Tom Brooke. Supposedly, he was required to name his place for tax purposes, and considered neighbor's more stylish choices pretentious.
I never heard that he died carving his initials into a beech tree. That sounds like an embellishment. I wonder what version you heard.
I should also mention that Dr. Mudd's dining room is separated from his parlor by "pocket doors" that slide into the partition, not folding doors. I am very familiar with the house, and can comment further.
When a writer carelessly gets details like this wrong it makes me question the accuracy of his whole story. Particularly since, in this case, Dr. Mudd said it was a distortion.
I agree that military control of Dry Tortugas was the most important factor in sending the conspirators there.
Mike

Where did you work in T.B., Mike? Up until the late-1960s, most of the businesses were run by my family or our close friends, the Dysons (also related via marriage). Our big, old Victorian existed in the village until 2014, when vandals burned it, and our family also owned Gwynn Park House until the 1980s.

As for the naming of the village: Thousands of acres were granted by the king to Thomas Brooke in the 1600s, and he named his estate Brookefield. He was also careful to mark the boundaries of his property; and the northwest boundary happened to be where the village began. He marked that corner with an English field stone (lots of them came to our area as ballast aboard the tobacco ships and were tossed and left when the hogsheads of tobacco sailed back to England; the foundations of our old house (ca. 1840) were formed from such stones).

The story is that some primitive roads and mainly Indian trails were around this cornerstone, which Brooke marked with his initials -- T.B. Where trails intersect, villages grow. My great-grandfather Huntt, who was raised two miles south on their plantation, remembered the stone still being there during his travels to D.C. My grandmother says it disappeared in the late-1800s (she was born in 1874) and thought that folks who bought up property probably destroyed it. I feel pretty confident that this is correct history of the name since great-grandpa sorta qualifies as a primary source, having seen the stone.

Did I miss something? What's the issue about "pocket doors" vs. "folding doors" at the Mudd house? You are quite right that they are pocket doors. Gwynn Park House (1857) had similar ones to turn one huge parlor into two smaller ones.

[mike86002000]

That pretty much matches the story I heard. thanks for the details.
"Brookefield" sounds very dignified. I worked in a gas station, there, part time, during high school.
The pocket doors isn't an 'issue" anymore than the origin of the name "T. B.". As I said, carelessness in the details, detracts from the credibility of the story, in this case the newspaper story quoted above.
As I understand it, land grants in Maryland, in early colonial times, weren't granted by the king, to individuals. Lord Baltimore was granted Maryland, with extraordinary powers, as an alternative to the failing Virginia colony. Lord Baltimore doled out estates, to be operated as though "owned" for three generations, in exchange for a token rent. Out right ownership of a large estate would only have come later after the Protestant take over, in Maryland. I don't think it would have been granted by the king.
I've always considered the story about ballast stones, even bricks, to be dubious. There was profitable cargo to be transported to America, from England.
Mike

[mike86002000]

It's always interesting to hear about details of other houses in the area, from the mid 1800's, such as the pocket doors in "Gwynn Park House". I found a couple of pictures of a Dr. Mudd, not Dr. Sam Mudd, house near Clinton. It's remarkably similar to Sam's house. Instead of the odd outside door that opens directly into the dining room, there is a window. A doorway, and small porch are at the end of the house, at what would have been an entrance hall, extending from front to back, and containing the stairs to the second floor.. At Sam's house, that end of the hall was partitioned off, to make Dr. Mudd's downstairs bed room. I saw the bare bones of that partition, after plaster and base board had been removed. Wall studs dangled from rafters. One had dove tailed wedges driven into it to salvage a warped piece of lumber, long ago. Generally, the workmanship didn't match the rest of the house. The doorway into the bedroom, from the dining room, is oddly narrow. I remember no evidence of a doorway to the outside. in the wall of Sam's bedroom. Plaster and lathes removed from the walls were mostly original, including the walls of the bedroom. I don't remember extra tack holes, there, but I worked mostly upstairs. The picture of the other Dr. Mudd house is definitely not Sam's. It may have been built more closely to the original basic design, Sam's house seems to be a variation.
Mike

[L Verge]

(08-09-2019 04:17 PM)mike86002000 Wrote:  That pretty much matches the story I heard. thanks for the details.
"Brookefield" sounds very dignified. I worked in a gas station, there, part time, during high school.
The pocket doors isn't an 'issue" anymore than the origin of the name "T. B.". As I said, carelessness in the details, detracts from the credibility of the story, in this case the newspaper story quoted above.
As I understand it, land grants in Maryland, in early colonial times, weren't granted by the king, to individuals. Lord Baltimore was granted Maryland, with extraordinary powers, as an alternative to the failing Virginia colony. Lord Baltimore doled out estates, to be operated as though "owned" for three generations, in exchange for a token rent. Out right ownership of a large estate would only have come later after the Protestant take over, in Maryland. I don't think it would have been granted by the king.
I've always considered the story about ballast stones, even bricks, to be dubious. There was profitable cargo to be transported to America, from England.
Mike

Usually, the profitable cargo (especially in the early years) was composed of furniture, china, silver, tea, and other more light-weight commodities. The stones provided the extra weight needed. These ballast stones were found near every port in Prince George's County - and probably others. I have quite a few of them stored at my house right now. We salvaged them from the home place as well as farms that we owned. They were used as foundations for outbuildings as well as houses. My grandmother said that her father gathered many of them from Piscataway, near St. Mary's Church. That would have been over a century after colonial commerce and after the broad creek had silted up.

I'll let you win the one about the land grants coming from the Lords Baltimore instead of the king of England. Maryland was a proprietary colony to begin with.

If you pumped gas in T.B. after the mid-50s, it must have been at the new Dyson store. Until our family store went out of business, it was the only one with gas pumps. If so, the Maryland historical marker about Thomas Brooke would have been in the median strip of Route 5, where Accokeek Road crosses over. Now that the new construction has changed everything, the marker has been moved closer to the original part of the village and is a bit more protected. It tells you that Brooke was a fairly influential member of society with political positions.

As for the Dr. Mudd house near Clinton, I would love to see photos and diagrams. Where did you see them? The only thing I can guess is that someone confused the old Griffin home with the Mudds' because the U.S. Representative Sydney Mudd married into that family. I remember the old house as a wreck when I was growing up. Crestview subdivision was built on the farm in the early-1960s.

Another possibility is that your source incorrectly identified Dr. Blandford's home as belonging to a Mudd because Dr. Blandford married Dr. Sam's sister. Booth actually rode right past that home on his escape. It stood and was lived in until about 1970 (where Burch Hill Road dead ends into Brandywine Road). Some of the Mudds and the Gwynns that married into the family lived in that area when I was a child. Ed Mudd, who died several years ago, was a friend and volunteered at the Dr. Mudd House.

Sorry for the reminiscences, folks. There's a smattering of history hidden in this message to Mike. We are also discussing an area just south of Surratt House that is quickly being destroyed in favor of McMansions and commercialization. Gotta keep a little history still alive somehow.

[mike86002000]

As for the Dr. Mudd house near Clinton, I would love to see photos and diagrams. Where did you see them? The only thing I can guess is that someone confused the old Griffin home with the Mudds' because the U.S. Representative Sydney Mudd married into that family. I remember the old house as a wreck when I was growing up. Crestview subdivision was built on the farm in the early-1960s.




I worked at T. B. Texaco, owned by Texaco, in the mid '60's.
The other Dr. Mudd house belonged to Dr. Sidney, or Sydney, Mudd. I had detailed information saved in an email I sent to my niece in 2017, but have somehow erased it. The picture was available for purchase from a man who sold civil war era photos. It was captioned "Dr. Mudd's house". I'll try to recover the information. I even had the street address, and a later picture of the house in ruins. It was demolished in the '50's.
Ed and his brother Al both worked at the Mudd House, and were my first cousins. I knew them well. They worked there after I left in the early 2000's, having worked as a volunteer for over 20 years.
Mike

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I found it!
Beth,
I finally got around to finding out what I could about the "Dr. Mudd House" picture. It was taken in the 1930's, and is Dr. Sidney Mudd's house in Clinton, built in the mid 1800's. There's a second photo taken a few years later. The house was in much worse shape. It's an end view, and gives a better idea of how deep the porch at the entrance was as well as the offset of the addition. It was abandoned in the 1930's, and finally demolished in the 1950's. The street address was Grafton Lane and Colorado Street, near Clinton; which I can't find. It may not be valid anymore.
It's very interesting that the general layout is so similar to Dr. Samuel Mudd's house. Same architect or builder, or just a popular design?
These are the pictures. They are labeled with the Dr's full name. The collection of Civil War photos where I first ran across the picture just says Dr. Mudd.
http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/c...d/85/rec/2 .
http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/c...d/48/rec/1 .
Mike

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More from my correspondence at the time,(2017):
Mike,
Thanks for sending the link! The photo is of the Dr. Sydney Emanuel Mudd house. The layout is remarkably similar to the Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd house, ( now the Dr. Samuel Mudd House and Museum); especially considering possible alterations in that house I know about.
From the Library of Congress link, I found the same photo, and a second one taken twenty years later, at:
http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/c...d/85/rec/2 .
http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/c...d/48/rec/1 .
There's a little more information there, too.
Mike
I sent that to the man who offered the photo, yet another Mike.

[mike86002000]

The "other Dr. Mudd House" does appear to be the Griffin house. It was demolished ten years later than I remembered.
Mike

[mike86002000]

Laurie,
Thomas Brooke was much more illustrious than I had imagined. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Brooke_Jr. . That's Jr. but said to be owner of Brookfield. I wonder which Tom Brooke put his initials on boundary stones, there were a few.
I'm still skeptical about the ballast stone story. I know it's widely repeated. Perhaps the folks at the Smithsonian could help. They should be able to analyze a sample, if you could spare an authentic stone, and tell for sure if it came from England. I'm a "National Associate Member", but that just means I bought their magazine subscription. I knew some of the nice folks who worked there, but that was a time ago. I think you would have more "clout/cred" as director of the Surratt House Museum. How big are these things? Would it be practical to ship one, or better to take a sample?
Mike

[L Verge]

(08-09-2019 08:35 PM)mike86002000 Wrote:  The "other Dr. Mudd House" does appear to be the Griffin house. It was demolished ten years later than I remembered.
Mike

The second photo is exactly like I remember the Griffin house when I was a child. I always wanted to sneak inside, but my folks knew the danger. Grafton and Colorado Streets are still there near the back of the southwestern part of Crestview Subdivision. The land was leveled a lot, and there was first an elementary school on those streets. Now it has been converted into a county police station, and the local Red Cross office shares some space.

The old house sat on a hill that I named Mockingbird Hill (guess which song and artist was popular then!). We would go up there because some of the sweetest wild strawberries in south county grew on the property. And then came the bulldozers.

I would double-check Dr. Sidney Emanuel Mudd, because I do not think that U.S. Representative Sydney Mudd, who married the Griffin daughter, was a medical or educational doctor. Maybe "this" Mudd is another generation?

If you worked for the Texaco station outside of T.B., was it leased and operated by Jimmy Cook at that time? They ran the station for years, and right across the road was another gas station run by the brother, Buddy Cook. I was a customer of Jimmy's for all mechanical work until his widow retired the business about 6-7 years ago. Haven't found a decent mechanic since.

I would suspect that both of your photos were taken by James Wilfong, an elderly friend of ours through the Surratt House, who was instrumental in saving old homes as well as photographing those that would be lost. I think he retired to Calvert County in the 1980s and continued to support historic preservation. He was our county's answer to the HABS project.

As for the T.B. stone, I believe that the original Thomas Brooke marked the property stone. Part of the estate extended past Brandywine and into the Croom area, where the name is still attached to at least a Methodist church. As for the stone itself, I don't have time to mess with the Smithsonian and analysis. In this case, I'm afraid that I am going to stick with explanations of my ancestors and other old-timers that I learned from.

You would be hard pressed to find these certain types of gray fieldstones indigenous to our area, I believe. Maryland fieldstones are more prevalent in Montgomery and other northern counties, and the ones that I have seen (and one used to be part of Surratt House grounds when a northern restoration architect decided to make it the step down from the kitchen door -- biggest safety hazard you could imagine!) are larger, chunkier, and rust-colored.

To our readers: Ain't it fun to watch native Marylanders quibble over their territory? Kinda reminds you of what the Civil War era and Maryland, the border state, must have been like...

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(08-10-2019 01:41 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(08-09-2019 08:35 PM)mike86002000 Wrote:  The "other Dr. Mudd House" does appear to be the Griffin house. It was demolished ten years later than I remembered.
Mike

The second photo is exactly like I remember the Griffin house when I was a child. I always wanted to sneak inside, but my folks knew the danger. Grafton and Colorado Streets are still there near the back of the southwestern part of Crestview Subdivision. The land was leveled a lot, and there was first an elementary school on those streets. Now it has been converted into a county police station, and the local Red Cross office shares some space.

The old house sat on a hill that I named Mockingbird Hill (guess which song and artist was popular then!). We would go up there because some of the sweetest wild strawberries in south county grew on the property. And then came the bulldozers.

I would double-check Dr. Sidney Emanuel Mudd, because I do not think that U.S. Representative Sydney Mudd, who married the Griffin daughter, was a medical or educational doctor. Maybe "this" Mudd is another generation?

If you worked for the Texaco station outside of T.B., was it leased and operated by Jimmy Cook at that time? They ran the station for years, and right across the road was another gas station run by the brother, Buddy Cook. I was a customer of Jimmy's for all mechanical work until his widow retired the business about 6-7 years ago. Haven't found a decent mechanic since.

I would suspect that both of your photos were taken by James Wilfong, an elderly friend of ours through the Surratt House, who was instrumental in saving old homes as well as photographing those that would be lost. I think he retired to Calvert County in the 1980s and continued to support historic preservation. He was our county's answer to the HABS project.

As for the T.B. stone, I believe that the original Thomas Brooke marked the property stone. Part of the estate extended past Brandywine and into the Croom area, where the name is still attached to at least a Methodist church. As for the stone itself, I don't have time to mess with the Smithsonian and analysis. In this case, I'm afraid that I am going to stick with explanations of my ancestors and other old-timers that I learned from.

You would be hard pressed to find these certain types of gray fieldstones indigenous to our area, I believe. Maryland fieldstones are more prevalent in Montgomery and other northern counties, and the ones that I have seen (and one used to be part of Surratt House grounds when a northern restoration architect decided to make it the step down from the kitchen door -- biggest safety hazard you could imagine!) are larger, chunkier, and rust-colored.

To our readers: Ain't it fun to watch native Marylanders quibble over their territory? Kinda reminds you of what the Civil War era and Maryland, the border state, must have been like...

OK, I'm on a geological roll... Have yet to find reference to English fieldstones found at Maryland ports, but here's a link to a report from North Carolina, where the dumping got serious enough to start damming up the port.
Ballast Stones
by William S. Powell, 2006

Ballast stone thrown from the vessels of Amadas & Barlowe at Roanoke Island, 1584. [photo would not copy]

Ballast stones, whose weight stabilized empty ships, have been found at various colonial landing sites along the North Carolina coast. Although there are no known records, residents and local historians believe that these stones, found in coastal counties along the shore and under water, were used as ballast in early sailing vessels. In the colonies, the market for manufactured goods from abroad was limited, but local produce such as lumber, naval stores, grain, and tobacco was exported from North Carolina. On the westbound voyage, ships needed weight to lower them in the water to keep them from capsizing; large stones filled the ships' hold, but after they arrived this ballast was thrown overboard to be replaced by products from the colony.

Jettisoned stones began to clog the harbors so badly that in 1769 North Carolina political leader Richard Caswell presented a bill in the colonial Assembly to appoint a ballast master who would regulate this activity in the vicinity of Ocracoke Inlet. The problem persisted, however, and in 1784 the General Assembly passed an act that prohibited ballast stones from being thrown into the channel of the Cape Fear River. Thereafter, before docking, ships were required to dispose of their ballast prior to reaching the low watermark. Stones left in shallower water undoubtedly provided the cobblestones still seen in some of the streets along the river in Wilmington.

Another source of info:

Q - When did ships start using water as ballast?
Hi all, bit of a randomly specific question here.

For context, I'm a PhD student researching marine invasive species that mainly spread through fouling ballast water tanks in ships. I'm looking at areas that have seen shipping transport for millenia (north east Europe and northwest Pacific), but these species wouldn't have been transported in great number until the adoption of water as ballast. I'm using genetic techniques to build an invasion pathway history, but want to see if what I've built roughly corresponds to the actual shipping history of the regions.

To that end, does anyone here have any insight as to when ballast water began being used en masse by the shipping community? From what I've found online, the 1800s pops up as a rough idea, but there's nothing more specific than that.

A - Hi naval architect here: The use of water ballast in ships really begins with the advent of iron and steal hulled ships. Prior to this ships used mostly large rocks, earth, or chunks of metal as ballast.

There were several reasons for this, but the biggest was that storing liquids securely in wood is difficult. Barrels are the only viable option and these take up a lot of space for their weight and degrade over time. Far easier and safer just to throw a bunch of rocks in the bottom. Metal storage tanks can be made water tight in almost any shape.

Another factor is the weight of cargo relative to the size of the ship. For open ocean vessels in the age of wooden ships, the weight of cargo was small compared to the total weight of the ship. Compare this to oil or ore carries today where most of the ship is cargo storage space. Look at pictures of loaded and unloaded oil tankers and you will see what I mean. When you have such a large difference in displacement between loaded and in-loaded stability really starts to be a problem so a ballast system that can be rapidly adjusted with pumps becomes more important.

So the short answer is that pumped water ballast comes with the advent of iron hulled ships. Sorry I don't have an exact date. If I had to guess I would say it starts in the 1830s really took off sometime in the 1860s. That said the other implied part of your question is when did it become common for iron hulled merchant ships traveling internationally. This is a slightly different question which depends more on the advent of efficient steam engines. I would suggest that a reasonably defendable start date for your question is the first trans Atlantic voyage of the great western in 1838, or the SS Great Britain in 1845.

Me - Since my great-grandfather was born in the 1830s and saw the stone, and since Thomas Brooke received his lands in the 1690s (I think), that fits beautifully into the timeline of when tobacco ships would be dumping rock ballasts in Maryland's southern tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay.

Just found that there is a book discussing the history of ballast stones around the world and how they have shaped civilizations: http://objectmatters.ruinmemories.org/ho...h-history/

[L Verge]

In an attempt to get this thread back on track to the Civil War era: There were two Sydney Emanuel Mudds, but neither held a doctorate degree of any sort that I can find, and both served distinguished positions in state and national governments. Sydney Emanuel Mudd (the elder) was the son of Jeremiah Mudd, and it was he who married into the Griffin family near Surrattsville, whose old home brought this subject up. He and Mary Ida Griffin Mudd then became the parents of Sydney Emanuel Mudd II.

Walter Griffin's name might be familar to those who have delved into the Confederate underground in Southern Maryland as well as the 1865 trial, because he is mentioned as a possible secessionist and also appears in some of Herold's material on folks in the area that he was familiar with as hunting and fishing companions of Herold's father and him.

To make the Confederate angle even better in the family, Walter Griffin married Eleanor Bryan -- as in the Bryans of Piscataway district and Surrattsville and related to Edward Pliny Bryan, who became a valued member of the Confederacy under Gen. Lee and then sent to Beauregard because he was so good at mining harbors. He was in the process of doing that in Charleston when he contracted yellow fever and died in that city. Researchers have yet to identify his burial place in Charleston.

The Griffin side of this is buried in the samll, largely-unknown cemetery behind St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Surrattsville/Clinton. The Mudd side went back to Charles County to be buried in St. Ignatius Catholic Church Cemetery outside of Port Tobacco (which is rich in Civil War history as well as the history of the Catholic Church in America).

[wpbinzel]

I return not to debate whether the military tribunal was "legal" or "illegal" as I think we have whacked that poor beast to death. I have appreciated the debate and the spirit in which it has been conducted.

However, I did want to circle back to something I wrote about two weeks ago while traveling. I suggested that President Johnson had a reason to pardon the three conspirators in the waning days of his administration other than the speculation that it was to avoid a Supreme Court ruling on Ex parte Mudd (which I find interesting and worthy of consideration, but it is still speculation. I have not accepted or rejected the notion).

In my opinion, the reason was contained in Johnson's Christmas 1868 proclamation in which he granted "unconditionally and without reservation, to all and to every person [emphasis added] who, directly or indirectly, participated in the late insurrection or rebellion a full pardon and amnesty for the offense of treason against the United States or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war." Because the Lincoln assassination conspirators were tried as enemy belligerents acting on behalf of a waring government (and regardless of whether you accept that today, that was the position of the US government in 1865), and because unlike earlier pardons, this one was unqualified and applied to "all and every person" who acted in any capacity on behalf of the Confederate government. Consequently, the December 25, 1868 proclamation had already pardoned Mudd, Arnold and Spangler. Since it was a done deal, was there a push to conclude the matter before what might have been an adverse Supreme Court ruling on Mudd? Again, it is not proven, but a notion worthy of consideration. But even if that was a motivating factor, it still does not overturn Boynton's ruling. It is likely that we will never know how the Court was going to rule on the case, and as I noted above, I see no point in further debate here.

The real irony is that because the conspirators were tried as enemy belligerents before a military tribunal, they were (or very likely would have been had the matter been litigated) included in Johnson's 1868 proclamation. Had they been tried and convicted by a civilian jury, Mudd and Arnold would have rotted their lives away in prison, as would have Spangler for another two years.

[bob_summers]

(08-07-2019 05:46 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Thanks, Mike. Personally I have never heard of a possible New York Times interview; I believe Mudd gave at least one interview after his release in 1869, but I've never read of a possible interview while he was imprisoned.

Roger: Dr. Mudd wasn't interviewed by any reporters at Fort Jefferson, but he was interviewed there by a representative of the congressional committee conducting the impeachment investigation of President Johnson. Dr. Mudd's brief statement is here: https://www.muddresearch.com/12-03-1867-...ssion.html

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(08-07-2019 04:20 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  William Keeler was aboard the ship that took Dr. Mudd to Ft. Jefferson. Keeler was a Navy Paymaster. He was concerned about the possibility of Mudd receiving a pardon, so he wrote his congressman, B.C. Cook. Does anyone know if Congressman Cook shared Keeler's letter with President Johnson? Does Mr. Prindle mention this letter?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Roger: Keeler's original letter is contained in Dr. Mudd's Pardon Case File B-596 at the National Archives (College Park), so I think it is safe to assume that Congressman Cook sent it on to Johnson for his consideration. Otherwise, how would it have gotten into the file? Just my hunch.

[RJNorton]

Thank you for sharing your information and thoughts, Bob. I've said this before and shall repeat: your Dr. Mudd website is absolutely terrific. The amount of information on it is awesome - an invaluable resource!