
The President’s Message:
THERE WILL BE NO MEETING IN MAY.
Mark your calendars for Wednesday, June 14th.
The speaker will be Guy Bachman.
We will also have books for sale at the meeting.
Gerridine LaRovere
June 14, 2023 Program:
Guy Bachman will speak about the military men who were stationed in
Florida before the Civil War.
This presentation will explain what they did to help form Palm
Beach County from roadways to the building the Jupiter lighthouse.
Many of men served and became famous during the Civil War.
April 12, 2023 Program:
Janell Bloodworth
presented a two-part program.
Through the years the name Mudd has been denigrated and always
has a negative connotation.
Janell told us the actual facts of Dr. Samuel Mudd’s encounter with John
Wilkes Booth. The second
part of the program answered the “burning” questions about General
Ambrose Burnside’s spy girl friend.
Did he know that she was a secret agent?
Did the general follow his rule of a death sentence to anyone
spying?
Your name is Mudd is not a phrase that elicits
admiration of any sense of pleasure.
This is
especially true for any member or descendant of the Mudd family of
Maryland. The expression
“your name is Mudd” came into being because Dr. Samuel Mudd of
Bryantown, MD set an injured man’s broken leg.
This act led to Dr. Mudd’s misfortune of spending almost four
years in prison.
On May 9, 1865, eight prisoners, iron manacles
clamped on their wrists, chains binding their ankles, and flanked by
soldiers of the Veteran Reserve Corps, filed slowly into the makeshift
courtroom on the third floor of Washington’s Arsenal Penitentiary.
Nine army officers sat ready to try them for murder.
Among the accused was the young physician.
Imprisoned for two weeks without benefit of an attorney, Dr. Mudd
had not yet begun to realize the enormity of the death charges facing
him. His crime was setting
an injured man’s leg.
Unfortunately for Dr. Mudd, that man was John
Wilkes Booth, who broke his leg while assassinating President Abraham
Lincoln. For his apparently
unwilling part in the conspiracy, Mudd was brought to trial and adjudged
guilty. His sentence was
life imprisonment. He missed
death by hanging by the vote of one man.
Originally sentenced to the federal penitentiary in Albany, NY,
Mudd was sent instead to Ft. Jefferson in Dry Tortugas.
The site was a maximum-security prison on an island 60 miles west
of Key West.
Mudd was condemned ostensibly because he had met
the assassin Booth at least once prior to the murder.
Some think it would be more correct to believe that he was
condemned by what General Lew Wallace reportedly said: “The deed is
done; somebody must suffer for it, and he may as well suffer as anybody
else.” The chain of events
that would catapult the 31-year-old into prison for life began on the
night of April 14th.
Booth made a comfortable living at $20,000. per
year, but he was determined to etch his name on the pages of history.
For much of his 26 years he dreamed of doing great deeds.
The original plan was to kidnap Lincoln in Washington and carry
him to Richmond, VA. Once
there he could be ransomed.
But after several false starts and postponements Booth began to turn
from abduction to assassination.
The murder proved to be ridiculously easy.
Lincoln had asked Secretary of War Stanton for a military guard,
but he was refused. His
protection as a single police guard to watch the presidential box who
was not there when Booth made his move.
Booth entered the box, shot Lincoln in the head, grappled with
Major Rathbone, and jumped from the box to the stage.
But he caught his spur on the flag draping the box and fell to
the stage breaking his leg.
In pain, Booth hobbled out a side door, and rode off on horseback
through the night.
At daybreak, 25 miles south of the capital, Dr.
Samuel Mudd awoke to a pounding on the door of his farmhouse.
“Who’s there?” he asked sleepily.
A voice from the outside said “I have an injured man in need of a
doctor.” The voice belonged
to David Herold, who that night had taken part in an unsuccessful
attempt on the life of Secretary of State William Seward.
Leaning on Herold’s shoulder, Booth entered the house.
Herold explained “My friend broke his leg falling off a horse.”
Did Mudd recognize Booth who he had met five months
before? Booth had said he
was “looking over property in the neighborhood” although he was planning
an escape route for his abduction of Lincoln plot.
According to at least one trial witness, whose reputation for
integrity has since been highly questioned, Mudd had met Booth in
Washington at an even later date.
Because of this, the court charged that Mudd had not only
recognized Booth, but had conspired with him to plan the assassination.
The charge seems rather thin.
It was unlikely that a broken leg would have been a part of
Booth’s plan. Mudd did not
learn of Lincoln’s death until later that day.
By that time Booth and Herold had already left his house.
It wasn’t even then generally known that Booth had
been the man to enter Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theater.
The War Department had carefully covered up the name of the
assassin even to the point of censoring it from press dispatches.
Mudd acted as any decent caring doctor would.
He slit open the stranger’s boot to remove it from his foot, set
the bone, and put him to bed.
Booth and Herold stayed in Mudd’s house most of Saturday, the day
after the shooting.
At one-point Mudd attempted to borrow a wagon from
his father so his patient could continue his trip in comfort, but he
failed to secure one. Booth
wanted a razor to shave off his mustache so Mudd loaned him one.
Then the doctor left his house to tend to other patients and to
some other duties on his farm.
While he was away Booth and Herold set off on horseback through
the swamp. As Booth was
leaving his disguise, a false beard, slipped slightly and Mrs. Mudd
became suspicious.
Dr. Mudd told acquaintances what little he knew
about the strangers the next morning.
But not until Tuesday, four days after the assassination, did
soldiers come to his house to investigate.
It wasn’t until the end of the week that Mudd was jailed, held on
the assumption that he willingly aided the escapees.
Meanwhile Booth and Herold remained hidden for a week in the
thick swamp a dozen miles to the south.
They were aided by plantation owner Colonel Samuel Cox and his
foster brother Thomas Jones.
Jones eventually helped them cross the Potomac one
night in a rowboat. The two
then traveled briefly with three pardoned Confederate soldiers.
Booth and Herold then stopped on the night of April 25th
at the farm of Richard Garrett.
They had crossed the Rappahannock River by ferry.
The Federal troops finally cornered Booth and Herold sleeping in
Garrett’s tobacco barn.
“Surrender” shouted a lieutenant “or we’ll fire the
barn and smoke you out like rats.”
Herold threw down his gun and walked out, but Booth refused to
give in so easily. The barn
was set on fire and to everyone’s surprise the building went up in a
flash. The barn was filled
with wooden furniture, stored by the Garretts for their neighbor, and
caught fire very quickly.
The flames nearly engulfed Booth and he spun around to make a quick
break for the door.
As Booth made six or seven steps toward the door
Sgt. Boston Corbett thought Booth was going to shoot his way out of the
barn. So he shot Booth who
fell forward on his face.
The bullet went through his neck cutting the spinal cord.
He died shortly thereafter.
Just Booth’s blood did not satisfy the people of the country.
Anyone involved with Lincoln’s murder must suffer for it.
So Dr. Mudd and seven others were brought before a military
tribunal.
The tribunal tried to claim that Dr. Mudd had not
only set Booth’s injured leg, but had also conspired with him in
Lincoln’s assassination. The
defense countered these charges.
After the trial four conspirators were taken off to be hanged.
Four others were sent to Ft. Jefferson Prison in Florida.
They were originally to be sent to Albany, but because the
opposition to a military court to try civilians caused the authorities
to send them south where there was less danger from civilian courts to
free them.
At first Mudd was incredulous that such a disaster
should have befallen him.
“Oh, there is no hope for me.” He reportedly exclaimed.
“Oh, I cannot live in such a place.”
At the end of the Civil War 250 army men were garrisoned at Ft.
Jefferson watching over 50 prisoners.
Dr. Mudd was assigned to duties in the prison hospital.
At first, he seemed hopeful that his wife and friends would soon
either successfully appeal his case or obtain a pardon from President
Andrew Johnson. But though
Johnson as much admitted that Mudd was innocent he would not release
him. “Public opinion is too
strong against such mercy at this time,” said the President.
Of course, Johnson had his own problems.
He was fighting people who wanted to impeach him.
There was also a very vocal minority who insisted that he and the
Secretary of War Stanton had aided in the assassination attempt.
Dr. Mudd became disillusioned with injustice and cruel treatment.
So – in September he attempted to flee his dungeon.
Although prisoners were constantly escaping from the loosely
guarded fort, Mudd did not have their subterfuge.
Also, other prisoners were not as famous as he and would not be
missed so quickly. He
managed to sneak outside the fort into the hull of a transport.
Ten minutes later soldiers found him and threw him in irons.
Although Dr. Mudd spent much of the remainder of his sentence in
chains, he did not regret the loss of his hospital privileges.
He wrote to his wife that it depressed him to see prisoners with
minor illnesses dying because of improper nutrition.
Two years later, in August of 1867, the first cases
of yellow fever appeared in a barracks room on the south side of the
fort. Two stricken soldiers
died within days. At that
time mosquitoes had not yet been identified as the spreaders of yellow
fever. So, the only
precaution taken was quarantine.
The disease would not be so easily contained.
It began to sweep the fort, spreading from the supposedly
infected south side.
Yellow fever, so many people thought at this time,
was a contagious disease.
You had to destroy the contaminated clothing of those who contracted it
to prevent the disease’s spread.
At one time during the Civil War, Southern leaders had even
considered a form of “germ warfare” whereby contaminated clothing would
be dumped in northern cities to start yellow fever epidemics.
Obviously, such plans were doomed to failure, since mosquitoes,
not infected clothes, were the culprits.
At Ft. Jefferson steady southeasterly winds carried
the mosquitoes and the disease along an almost predictable path.
Soldiers and prisoners living in neighboring rooms began to fall
like dominoes. One of Mudd’s
fellow prisoners remarked to him – “Doctor, the yellow fever is the
fairest and squarest thing that I have seen the past 4 or 5 years.
It makes no distinction in regard to rank, color, or previous
condition. Ever man has his
chance and I would advise you, as a friend, not to interfere.
Mudd, however, as a doctor, had to interfere.
17 days after the big epidemic’s outbreak, prison surgeon, J. Sim
Smith, died of yellow fever.
The commanding officer, Major Stone, walked reluctantly toward Dr.
Mudd’s quarters to ask him to manage the hospital until the arrival of
another surgeon.
On his way he encountered a man
with a message from the imprisoned doctor.
Dr. Mudd had already volunteered his services.
Upon taking charge
Dr. Mudd immediately changed treatment procedures.
Newly stricken victims had formerly been transported by boat over
rough seas to a hospital on Sandy Key, two and a half miles away.
Aware that only instant attention could halt the disease’s
advance through the system, Mudd treated the sick immediately within the
fort. Dr. Mudd contracted
the disease himself but recovered.
During the weeks off and on that he took charge of the hospital,
Dr. Mud proved to be an effective doctor.
Not one patient died.
It appeared that Mudd would soon be rewarded.
Following the death of Major Stone’s wife from yellow fever, the
prison commandant left the island with his two-year-old son.
Major Stone promised that when he arrived in Washington, he would
attempt to obtain a pardon as a reward for Dr. Mudd’s humanitarian work.
But – when he arrived in Key West he came down with yellow fever
and died.
But – when a new commandant arrived at Ft.
Jefferson, Mudd was again thrown into chains.
He totally despaired of ever getting a release.
Meanwhile Dr. Mudd’s wife and his friends continued their pleas
for justice – at least clemency. By
now the public that had been so quick to thirst for the “blood” of the
conspirators almost four years ago had almost forgotten or lost interest
in them. The impeachment
action against Johnson had failed.
In 1869, just before leaving office, he signed a pardon releasing
Mudd from prison.
Dr. Mudd returned home broken in spirit and
weakened in health. 14 years
later he died of pneumonia at the age of 50 – an illness he contracted
while visiting a sick patient on a bad wintery night.
This story does not end there.
In October 1959 Congress passed and President
Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law a bill providing for a bronze
memorial at Ft. Jefferson commemorating Dr. Samuel A. Mudd’s services to
the yellow fever victims.
Mudd’s grandson worked for 50 years to clear his grandfather’s name.
In 1979 President Jimmy Carter issued a proclamation absolving
Mudd in any complicity in Lincoln’s death.
Burnside & Lottie
Tragic
as it was there were instances and episodes that showed that human
nature was not all bad. The
story of Ambrose Burnside and his love for a delightful young woman and
what happened to their relationship is a good example.
Cynthia Charlotte Moon was a beauty.
She was petite with thick, lustrous brown hair and sparkling
blue-gray eyes.
Her beguiling ways attracted many a suitor.
Most of her suitors, friends, and family members called her
Lottie. All of those who
knew her described her as witty, charming, a sparkling
conversationalist, and always, above all – a prankster.
One of Lottie’s more startling talents was her ability to throw
her jaw out of joint with a cracking sound while feigning extreme agony.
In the future this would have some unusual applications.
During her teens Lottie played many parts in the local theater.
What she learned there she would put to remarkable use as one of
the confederacy’s most daring and unorthodox spies.
Lottie was born in Danville, VA.
When she was five years old her father, a physician moved the
family to Oxford, OH. As a
teenager Lottie did not abide by the refined traditions of her day.
Often, she would shoot at targets with a pistol or ride bareback
through the town. She was
never at a loss for words or afraid to speak her mind.
She truly enjoyed shocking her prim contemporaries.
Lottie attended Oxford College for Women for a
short time, but college did not tame her of her wild ways.
The college history described her as “the most widely-known,
quick-witted, unafraid of any scheme-man-could-devise, captivating
belle.” Lottie was never
lacking for suitors. One of
the most ardent was Ambrose Everett Burnside, whom she met while
visiting relatives in Indiana.
Ambrose fell in love with the vivacious and
intelligent Lottie. After a
whirlwind romance he persuaded her to, as he phrased it – “set the good
day” – the day for their wedding.
On the wedding day with family, guests, and the minister
assembled Ambrose solemnly promised to love, cherish, honor, and obey
Cynthia Charlotte Moon. The
minister then asked of Lottie if she would love, cherish, honor, and
obey Ambrose. “No, sir-ee
Bob, I won’t” she exclaimed, retreated down the aisle and hurried away.
It was no surprise that Ambrose Burnside was
understandably upset. But –
Lottie managed to convince him that it had all been in fun.
Instead of becoming bitter (as any “sane” man would have done)
Ambrose became her suitor again.
But she soon had eyes for another – and another – and another.
Infact Lottie became engaged to 12 hopeful men at one time.
One of them was a student at Miami University.
His name was James Clark who would later become a brilliant Ohio
judge. When Lottie’s father
met Clark he told his daughter, “You can marry that Yankee Burnsides
anytime you want to, but Jim Clark has too much brains for you.”
This may have been the wrong thing to say to
Lottie. She took an interest
in young Clark and found a bizarre unorthodox way to express it.
It began with one of her pell-mell gallops through the streets of
Oxford. She raced through
the streets of town, through the outskirts, and several miles down the
road where she confronted the approaching stage from Cincinnati.
She ascertained from the driver, a family friend, that Jim Clark
was a passenger. She
persuaded her friend to let her drive the coach into town.
With a crack of the whip, she sent the horses plunging forward
with the coach careening and skidding, sometimes on two wheels, into
Oxford.
At the Mansion House Hotel she jammed on the
brakes, skidded off the road, and came to a abrupt stop.
Irate, disheveled passengers piled out, furiously waving their
fists, and cursing. Lottie
remained aloof and unmoved waiting for the last passenger – Jim Clark to
appear. At the sight of her
his stern face relaxed into a grin.
“How do you do, Lottie” he said.
“I was in quite a hurry and I thank you.”
It was one of Lottie’s better performances and it certainly
caught Clark’s attention.
They shortly became an inseparable couple and soon
announced their engagement.
As another wedding day approached, rumor had it that Lottie had issued a
challenge to another of her many suitors, John Bond, a newspaper editor
– “If you get here before I marry Jim, I’ll marry you.”
Whether Clark heard the rumor or not, he was aware of the fiasco
that had taken place with Burnside.
According to one story, as the couple met to
descend a staircase for the ceremony, Clark showed Lottie a small
revolver concealed in his palm.
He is supposed to have whispered to Lottie – “There will be a
wedding tonight or a funeral tomorrow.”
Many years later Lottie’s granddaughter insisted that Lottie was
the one secreting a pistol in the folds of her wedding dress because
another suitor had threatened to disrupt the wedding.
In any case the wedding ceremony went forward
uninterrupted – January 30, 1849.
It was actually a union of two great minds.
For more than a decade their married life was tranquil.
They moved to Jones Station Ohio.
Judge Clark had one of the best libraries in the county.
Lottie became a voracious reader, soaking up science texts,
biographical writings, and Darwin’s theories.
She bore two sons – one of whom died in infancy.
When the approach of the Civil War seemed ominous
Judge Clark and his young wife opposed the war and were sympathetic to
the South. Judge Clark
openly avowed his belief in the right of states to secede under the
Constitution. He and his
wife both favored gradual emancipation of slaves within the Union.
They were not alone in their viewpoints.
Butler County, where they resided, was considered a hotbed of
Southern sympathizers.
When the war came the Clarks were torn between
their loyalties to the Union and to the South.
They chose the South.
Lottie’s brother Robert joined the Confederate Army and William the
Confederate Navy. At the
beginning of the war the Clarks secreted supplies for wounded
Confederate soldiers being cared for secretly in the homes of fellow
sympathizers.
Once Lottie had her son, Frank, stay in bed for
weeks, even though he was perfectly well, so that she would have a
reason to order medical supplies.
She also delivered supplies and helped care for convalescents.
As one might expect from Lottie, those staid local involvement in
the war weren’t enough to satisfy her.
She learned that her brother, Bob, had been captured and was a
prisoner at Camp Chase in Columbus.
She immediately traveled to Columbus and gained
entrance to the prison with the help of a family friend- the governor.
Brother Bob was not there but she saw many other young men who
were friends and acquaintances.
Lottie was appalled at the conditions at Camp Chase and, true to
form, kept it no secret. She
crusaded unfalteringly until improvements were made.
In the summer of 1862 Lottie’s involvement in the war was
transformed and upgraded due to an arrival at the Clark home.
Walker Taylor, the nephew of Zachary Taylor and
notorious Confederate spy, ostensibly came to the Clarks to buy mules
for his plantation. In fact,
however, he was carrying dispatches from Confederate General Sterling
Price to Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith concerning Braxton
Bragg’s army in the Kentucky campaign.
Taylor was afraid of being recognized in the area and needed
someone else to deliver the messages.
So – guess who volunteered?
Lottie did, of course.
She put a floppy old sunbonnet on her head, bundled herself and
the dispatches into a shabby old shawl and assumed her role of an Irish
washerwoman. No one
challenged her as she made her way through Cincinnati and across the
Ohio River into Kentucky.
Once in Kentucky she persuaded some Irish soldiers to hide her on a
troop transport bound for Lexington.
In Lexington she slipped away, followed the Lexington Pike until
she met a Confederate officer, Colonel Thomas Scott.
She passed him the papers to take to General Kirby Smith.
By this time Lottie was feeling very confident and
proud of her accomplishment but – oops.
Suddenly she was faced with an unexpected problem and challenge.
When she arrived at the station in Lexington, she noticed an
excited crowd there.
Word had spread that a female spy might be
returning from Southern lines and there was an order for her arrest
throughout the entire region.
Undaunted and loaded with self-confidence Lottie did not even try
to be inconspicuous. She
brazenly took a seat on the train directly behind a well-known Kentucky
Unionist, General Leslie Coombs.
She even attracted attention to herself by sobbing
into an old kerchief. She
told her tale of woe to the sympathetic general.
She was grief stricken over the condition of her “poor darlin
husband a-dyin” in a hospital in Lexington.
She said she was returning from a visit, but was terrified of
being mistaken for “that spy.”
Coombs took the old woman under his protection and put her safely
on the ferry going back across the Ohio.
Lottie was so buoyed by her success that she took
on another assignment with no fear or trepidation at all.
This assignment involved a trip to Canada.
While there she was to pick up a dispatch to Confederate
President Jefferson Davis from leaders of the Confederate intelligence
organization, the Knights of the Golden Circle.
After leaving Canada, on her way south to Virginia, Lottie
stopped in Washington.
At a social function there she met a fellow Ohio
native, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
With her charm and beguiling ways Lottie won Stanton’s complete
confidence. He even arranged
to have her ride with President Lincoln and his party to visit General
McClellan’s Army of the Potomac.
McClellan issued Lottie a pass to travel through the Union lines
to Richmond.
When Stanton learned of Lottie’s espionage
activities, he was furious and offered a $10,000. reward for the female
spy – dead or alive. On her
way back to Ohio from Virginia Lottie met up with Union General F.J.
Milroy. Milroy had his
suspicions about Lottie and questioned her.
She explained that she was on her way from Warm Springs, VA to
Hot Springs, AR in hopes of getting some relief from her debilitating
rheumatism.
General Milroy asked his surgeon to examine Lottie
to find out if she was telling the truth.
During the examination Lottie used her acting talents and her
girlhood prank of popping her jaw with accompanying cracking and
grinding noises. This clever
maneuver convinced the doctor that Lottie was indeed experiencing a
serious malady. She received
permission to continue on her way.
Lottie finally reached Cincinnati and was close to
the safety of her home when she learned that two female spies had been
arrested that week and that soldiers were looking for a third.
Lottie’s luck began to change when she encountered the Union
General commanding the Army of the Ohio – Ambrose Burnside.
In the 15 years since they had last seen each other, both Lottie
and Burnside had changed a great deal.
He had gained weight and was sporting those
flamboyant side whiskers which became known as sideburns.
Lottie was no longer the young and coquettish teen Ambrose had
wooed and lost. She naively,
hoped that he would not recognize her and unabashedly complained about
her rheumatism and begged for a pass-through Cincinnati.
When she had finished Burnside said mildly – “You have forgotten
me, but I have not forgotten the many happy hours I once spent with you
in Oxford.” Lottie could not
escape from this dilemma.
She was Burnside’s prisoner.
Unfortunately, General Burnside had recently issued
an order that required the death penalty for anyone who helped the
Confederacy. Lottie was not
his only prisoner. He also
had in his custody the two female spies arrested a few days earlier for
smuggling supplies to the South.
Believe it or not – they were Lottie’s sister Virginia and their
mother Cynthia.
Lottie’s luck had not really run out.
In spite of Burnside’s harsh orders for dealing with Confederate
spies, the records show that they were not applied to Lottie, her
sister, or their mother. The
women were imprisoned for three months, but not in dingy vermin infested
jail. They spent a
comfortable three months in the Burnet House in Cincinnati.
All charges were dropped.
Not a word appeared in any newspapers regarding Lottie Moon’s
arrest or later parole. But
from then on, she was watched constantly.
Her usefulness to the Confederacy was at an end.
After the war Judge Clark and Lottie moved to New
York City. There she became
a correspondent for a large New York newspaper – the New York World.
Her wartime activities were not over.
She went to Europe to cover the Franco-Prussian War.
After returning to New York, she wrote several books including
two editions of a book about the Civil War.
At the age of 66 Lottie encountered an adversary she could not
outwit. She died of cancer
on November 20, 1895, at her son’s home in Philadelphia.
Last changed: 05/04/23 |