(08-07-2019 10:42 AM)RJNorton Wrote: The interview is on Dave's site here, and it's on Bob Summers' site here.
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Thanks for making that accessible. It's interesting.
For an even stronger condemnation of Charles County, see George Stevens' letters in "Voice Of Thunder".
He was a servant with Hooker's forces, near Hilltop, West of LaPlata. He was also a "slave stealer" abolitionist, encouraging slaves to run away. He wrote that roads in Southern Maryland didn't deserve to be called roads, and commented on the worn out, desolate, fields. He said all the intelligent negroes had long since run away to Washington. He later served with the "Glory Brigade", deserting , for a time, in Florida, possibly suffering from battle fatigue/shock. Still later he taught in black schools, in Virginia. He wrote about an atrocity that supposedly occurred when one of Cox's runaway slaves sought refuge with Union forces in Hilltop. Cox is supposed to have demanded his "property", dragged the slave back to Bel Alton, and beat him to death. I asked Mike Kaufman his opinion and he dismissed it all as abolitionist propaganda. Local news paper files from that time are missing. Dispatches from Stevens were widely reprinted in Northern papers, at the time.
Mike
[quote='L Verge' pid='78215' dateline='1565186803']
Dr. Mudd was interviewed by the New York Herald shortly after he returned home in March of 1869. I think he was reluctant to be interviewed, but finally agreed -- and then complained, after the article appeared, about how he was misrepresented. As far as being interviewed while in prison, I doubt that seriously and do not recall ever reading such a thing. Since Stanton wanted the conspirators away from the public (and reporters) enough to change their sentence from Albany to Ft. Jefferson, I would suspect that the sharks in the moat at the latter abode would be sicced on anyone even smelling like a reporter.
Check with BoothieBarn because I think that Dave had something about the Herald article a few years ago.
I by no means claim there was an interview while Dr. Mudd was in prison, in Florida. He did communicate with the outside world. What do think is in the Nettie Mudd book?
Reporters and lawyers didn't have to be allowed off the ship, at Dry Tortugas. Any sharks probably fed on garbage and waste from the fort, not prisoners. Southern Florida Federal District courts were under control of Boyington, a Lincoln appointee, from the North, who could be counted on to serve the administration, and deny the prisoners their rights. That's why the "conspirators" were sent there.
Mike.
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