Robert Summers has published two books. The first book, The Assassin's Doctor, is a biography of his great grandfather, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who provided medical assistance to John Wilkes Booth following the Lincoln assassination. Robert's earlier writings on Dr. Mudd have all been incorporated into The Assassin's Doctor.
Robert's mother was born and raised on the Mudd family farm where John Wilkes Booth sought medical help from Dr. Mudd after Booth had assassinated president Lincoln. Her father was Samuel Mudd II, a one year-old baby when Booth came to the farm. Her room growing up on the farm in the early 1900's was the same room Booth stayed in when he was there in 1865.
Dr. Mudd was not a subject of much discussion when Robert was growing up, despite many happy visits to the Mudd farm as a youngster. As an adult, he learned more about Dr. Mudd's involvement in the Lincoln assassination story, and decided to conduct additional research into Dr. Mudd's life. The Assassin's Doctor contains information about Dr. Mudd's life never reported before.
Robert's second book, Maryland's Black Civil War Soldiers, is the story of Maryland's 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. In addition to a history of the regiment's actions during the Civil War, the book includes short biographies of each of the thousand soldiers in the regiment. Anyone conducting genealogical research on these soldiers will find this information invaluable.
This large book was a ten year project, requiring the personal review of the soldiers' military and pension files at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C. The regiment was organized and trained at Camp Stanton, only ten miles from Dr. Mudd's farm. Most of the soldiers were former slaves from farms in southern Maryland and the eastern shore of Maryland. Some had been slaves on Mudd family farms.
President Abraham Lincoln was enjoying a play with his wife in a box overlooking the stage at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on the evening of April 14, 1865. A little after 10 p.m., John Wilkes Booth silently entered through the door of the box and shot the president in the back of the head with a small derringer pistol. Confident in his athletic ability, Booth leapt from the president's box down to the stage, shouting "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" ("thus always to tyrants").
But Booth landed hard and broke the shin bone in his left leg. He hobbled across the stage, out the back door of the theatre, mounted his horse, and rode hard out of the city into Southern Maryland, where he met up with a waiting co-conspirator, David Herold.
Booth told Herold he needed to get help for his broken leg from a doctor he knew, Samuel A. Mudd, who lived near Bryantown, Maryland. Unaware of the assassination, Dr. Mudd admitted the two men to his farm house, put a splint on Booth's leg, and let him rest in an upstairs bedroom. Later that day, Dr. Mudd went to Bryantown where he learned that Booth had assassinated President Lincoln. But he didn't alert the authorities that Booth was at his farm. Instead, he returned to his farm just as Booth and Herold were leaving. Booth was shot and killed by Union Soldiers a few days later after being tracked into Virginia. Herold was taken alive.
Eight people, including Dr. Mudd, were arrested, tried, and convicted of conspiring with Booth. Dr. Mudd had nothing to do with the assassination, but the trial judges considered Dr. Mudd's failure to alert the authorities to Booth's presence at his farm constituted conspiracy to help Booth escape capture. Four of those convicted had played an active role in the assassination and were executed. The other four, including Dr. Mudd, were sentenced to incarceration at the Fort Jefferson military prison on an island in the Gulf of Mexico.
This book is the story of Dr. Mudd's almost four years at Fort Jefferson, including his failed attempt to escape on a visiting supply ship, his confinement in the fort's dungeon, and his heroic work during a terrible yellow fever epidemic at the fort. Three hundred thirteen soldiers, 54 prisoners, and 20 civilians - a total of 387 people - were at the fort at the time of the epidemic. Two hundred seventy of them contracted yellow fever. When the fort's doctor died at the beginning of the epidemic, Dr. Mudd and a civilian doctor from Key West took over and cared for those struck down by the disease.
When the epidemic had finally run its course, every surviving soldier at Fort Jefferson signed a petition asking President Andrew Johnson to pardon Dr. Mudd for his heroic work during the epidemic. Johnson pardoned Dr. Mudd on March 8, 1869, in large part because of his work during the epidemic.
After his release from prison, Dr. Mudd returned home to his wife and children, redeemed in the eyes of many for his life-saving work at Fort Jefferson. He lived 14 more years, dying from pneumonia in 1883 at the age of 49.
Título : Dr. Samuel A. Mudd at Fort Jefferson
EAN : 9798224668892
Editorial : Robert K. Summers
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