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today’s birthday: Samuel Mudd (1833)


Today’s Birthday

Samuel Mudd (1833)

Mudd was the physician who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, just hours after Booth fled the crime scene. A Confederate sympathizer, Mudd was accused of aiding Booth’s escape and tried along with Booth’s other accomplices. Throughout, Mudd maintained that he had not recognized the disguised Booth, an acquaintance of his, and had been unaware of the assassination, but he was nonetheless convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Why was he pardoned in 1869? More… Discuss