Food for Thought

[L Verge]

First, I want to credit Dave Taylor's BoothieBarn for carrying this posting regarding why President Andrew Johnson probably pardoned the Lincoln conspirators held at Fort Jefferson at the time that he did. Interesting point made by Sandy Prindle, a retired Texas judge who spoke on his new book at the Surratt conference in April.

Sandy Prindle
I contend in my just released book “Booth’s Confederate Connections” by Pelican Publishing that Dr. Mudd, like the other two surviving prisoners at Dry Tortugas, were pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, not because of [Mudd's] efforts in the yellow fever epidemic, but because of their impending habeas corpus actions before the Supreme Court. The pardons were granted a year and a half after the epidemic but just weeks before a Supreme Court decision was expected. Johnson did not want his behavior revisited about Mary Surratt being executed by an illegal court. In addition, he didn’t want the press to dig up the fact that he treated Mary Surratt’s daughter badly on the day of the execution nor that the prisoners were given just twenty-four hours notice of their execution. It was a legacy that he didn’t want to face, in view of the fact that he was leaving the White House in disgrace. The ex-parte Milligan ruling would have caused him much more grief than he could overcome.

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While searching for the source of the reference to the lone shark that patrolled the waters of the moat at Fort Jefferson, I ran across an interesting article from the October 18, 2011, edition of the Washington Post in which a visitor relates the following history told by his NPS guide. Make sure you read about the Christmas dinner... First time I had seen that, but it is probably in Nettie Mudd Monroe's book, which I have not read in over 40 years.

"Mudd, an unapologetic slave owner, regarded himself as a martyr to Yankee tyranny. Engraved over the entrance to the casement where he lived is a quote from Dante’s “Inferno”: “Whoso Entereth Here Leaveth All Hopes Behind.” In his letters home, Mudd complained piteously of “degrading” punishment and “inhuman” conditions, citing among other things the shame of being guarded by black soldiers.

"In fact, according to our guide and “America’s Fortress,” apart from a brief period after he tried to escape, Mudd was not shackled. He was allowed to move freely around the fort, and to earn money for luxuries such as tobacco, foodstuffs and civilian clothing by making boxes and picture frames inlaid with sea shells that he sold to officers and visitors to the fort. One Christmas, Mudd wrote home that he had even dined on roast turkey, oysters, fresh peaches and other treats.

"The Union prisoners and their guards shared virtually all Mudd’s discomfort. The official rations were generally abysmal: Meat was often rancid, bread infested with bugs and the water with wriggling worms. Malaria, dysentery, cholera, sunstroke and other ailments were chronic. Isolation bred excruciating loneliness. Men went mad almost as a matter of course. As Harrison Herrick of the 110th New York noted in his diary, displayed in the museum, 'One of the guards, one of the Del. Artillery shot himself through the head. He was crazy. Wether fair and plesant.' [sic]"