Dr. Samuel Mudd Trial: 1865 - Was Mudd Really Guilty?

The government first sent Mudd to serve his sentence in an Albany, New York penitentiary. Later the government sent Mudd to a prison on Dry Tortugas Island in Florida. Poor prison conditions, low 19th-century standards of hygiene, and the tropical climate led to an epidemic of disease on the island. Mudd used his professional training to save the lives of many fellow inmates. President Andrew Johnson pardoned Mudd for his humanitarian work in 1868.

Although Mudd was a free man after 1868, he was tainted by the military commission's guilty verdict until he died in 1883. While there were certainly some guilty individuals among the convicted conspirators, Mudd's involvement seemed so innocent that many historians as well as Mudd's descendants have challenged the commission's guilty verdict as being politically motivated. These believers in Mudd's innocence kept his cause alive. In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter wrote Mudd's descendants to express his belief in Mudd's innocence and effectively extended Johnson's pardon to cover any implication that Mudd had been involved in Booth's conspiracy.