Dr. Mudd...Guilty or Innocent?

[cw1865]

Originally Posted by ole

It does support my contention that Mudd had been in on some kind of conspiracy.

If Mudd agreed to be some sort of pre-arranged safe house, he can be found guilty of conspiracy even if he doesn't know the actual motives of the entire conspiracy. In what I have read there does not appear to be any evidence of this.

Originally Posted by ole

I still don't believe that at 0400 the following morning, Mudd could have been aware that Lincoln had been shot. News travelled fast, but not that fast and not overnight.

The question changes a little bit here, the question is whether Mudd learned of Lincoln's killing from Booth himself in which case fixing the leg makes him an accessory after the fact unless he notifies authorities as soon as its safe to do so (ie. he could argue that he fixed the leg under duress or fearing that he would be put under duress if he refused) Problem here is that he waits.

[J_Man0507]

Originally Posted by whitworth

During the war, there were numerous spies that traveled between Washington, D.C. and Virginia. It wasn't as if Booth had just established routes, safe houses, and people who would aid someone traveling to Confederate Virginia.

One interesting account is a confession by George Atzerodt who was hung for the Lincoln assassination. Dr. Mudd would have been a safe house location for spies and provide physician services if needed.

The Atzerodt confession was found, in the papers of his trial attorney, Captain William E. Doster.

http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln82.html

GEORGE ATZERODT'S LOST CONFESSION

"I am certain Dr. Mudd knew all about it, as Booth sent (as he told me) liquors & provisions for the trip with the President to Richmond, about two weeks before the murder to Dr. Mudd's."
***

While Dr. Mudd may not have been directly involved in the assassination of Lincoln, he surely was part of the Confederate spy network, that Booth used to make his planned get-away.

I have been reading American Brutus by Michael Kauffman, and he brought up the Atzerodt confession. Now, back in the 1860's, turning states evidence in order to get a lesser sentence was not legal, so trying that course wasn't going to work. Yet it seemed that Atzerodt was trying his hardest to take the witness stand and get just that. Here is what Kauffman had to say:

"Atzerodt had no chance of taking the witness stand unless he could provide evidence against the others. Knowing that, he tried to implicate Dr. Mudd, but he made a weak case. As he said in the proffer, 'Booth sent (as he told me) liquor and provisions for the trip with the President to Richmond, about two weeks before the murder to Dr. Mudd's.' The operative phrase here was 'as he told me.' It confirmed that Atzerodt's information was secondhand. He did not really know whether Booth was telling him the truth about Mudd, or whether the doctor actually accepted those items, knowing how they were to be used. All he could offer was hearsay passed from a deceptive source through an unreliable witness."

This pretty much says it all, I think. If one looks at Booth over the entire course of the plot to kidnap, and eventually assasinate, President Lincoln, he does his best to create false paths and implicate people who had not part in the plot. He is doing this, as Kauffman points out over the course of his book, to create false paths, leading away from him, so that when the deed is done, and they come looking for him, there will be so many trails to follow, nobody will know which is the real one.

And, if he did send provisions to Mudd, why is there no record of him ever having picked them up? Nobody ever said that Booth got anything that he had sent to Mudd's home when he stopped there. Not one person came forward and offered any evidence of any such exchange. Not even Ed Steers could provide evidence of such in his case against Mudd. If Booth did tell Atzerodt that he sent supplies to Mudd's, then it could be just another false lead, or Atzerodt was just making something up to try and make one of the other defendants look guilty and point the blame away from him, which I think to be the case.

So there you go. I think that one can't accept Atzerodt's "confession" as anything but either an attempt at getting a lesser sentence, or another false path started by Booth.