Dr. Mudd Lends a Hand

[Susan Higginbotham]

This account by Mrs. Theodore L. Burnett of crossing the Potomac was published in the April 1907 issue of The Confederate Veteran. Thought you might find the mention of Dr. Mudd at the end interesting. It would also be nice to know the identity of the unnamed "Southern sympathizer" Mrs. Burnett mentions.

How to get across the broad river was the question, at this season, too. when the tide was troublesome. Meanwhile the surrender of Lee had taken place. At night
our little boats came out of hiding up the small streams, and we started; but when halfway over we found the tide too high and had to return, stopping farther down the stream, where they told us it was fourteen miles wide. The following
night we made a successful effort; but just as we were nearing the Maryland shore a volley was fired over our heads with a demand to “surrender,” which we did. But when our captors found they had little else but women and children, they were greatly disappointed and quite indignant. We were marched to Lieutenant Leftwich’s headquarters and questioned and personally examined. Dear Mrs. Ashbridge, how grandly she bore herself through this trying ordeal! We
were now prisoners, and were marched to a farmhouse of a Southern sympathizer not far away, where breakfast was ordered for the party by our guard. The man at whose house we breakfasted would receive no remuneration from us, though broken in purse, in spirit, and in health. After break fast his carriages and wagons were "impressed" to take us to Washington. We stopped for a day at Port Tobacco, the little place soon afterwards immortalized in history. We were closely guarded. not allowed to leave our rooms; but through my little boy, who was permitted to pass at will, we accepted the offer of Dr. Mudd to be of service to us and got him to
exchange some gold for greenbacks. He gave my little boy a picture of himself, which we still have as a relic of the war. This was on the 12th of April. A few days later he was an actor in more thrilling events. The same Dr. Mudd was arrested and imprisoned for setting Wilkes Booth's leg.