Samuel Carter (1) (1904–)

This is the third book that I have read on the subject of Samuel Mudd, so my take on it may be different from someone reading this without knowledge of the contrary arguments. In the end, although Carter took on some of these arguments, I don't think that he had a satisfying answer to most. I am simply not convinced that Mudd didn't know who his visitor was and wasn't an accessory after the fact. He appears to have attempted, and in the end failed, to not be responsible for Booth and Herold's capture without be held responsible for their escape. Whether his trial was properly conducted or his sentence was reasonable are other questions.

The discussions of Mudd tend to confuse a mistrial with an aquittal with proof of innocence. If the military tribunal that tried Mudd, et al., was unconstitutional, that is a mistrial, not necessarily a declaration of any degree of a lack of guilt. Was the evidence sufficient for a guilty verdict? Courts are reluctant to overturn such verdicts given the importance of actually seeing the witnesses testify as opposed to reading a transcript. Even if they did rule it insufficient, that is not the same thing a declaring someone innocent. Carter leads us astray here: he complains that Mudd was not allowed to testify on his own behalf. In fact, that was the law at the time. It was later changed, but if Mudd should be therefore acquitted, so should anyone else convicted before the law was rewritten.

Carter also sets my teeth on edge with his attitudes towards the politics of the time. The Confederacy, he tell us, merely wanted to be left alone. Of course, at the time, he tells us, they were also attempting to get the Northwest to secede and join them. I can appreciate that the shifts caused by the abolition of slavery were hard on the local planters, and even feel a certain sympathy, but Carter is utterly oblivious to how the slaves felt about it. Were they to remain slaves in order to preserve someone else's way of life? Was slavery rapidly dying out making all this unnecessary? According to one interpretation, slavery appeared to be dying out around the time the Constitution was being written. Some historians argue that those then favoring abolition compromised because they supposed that slavery would collapse in a couple of decades. Wrong.

Before I had even gotten to Mudd's trial, I was exasperated with Carter's dramatic purple prose. He repeatedly attempts to link the trial of the Lincoln conspirators with the Reign of Terror during the French revolution. Were he attempting to link this too the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, I would be more sympathetic, although I would question if even that is the worst case of government-sponsored terror. We get such dramatic statements as a description of Grenfell's imprisonment:

"Suffering from an attack of dysentery to which he was prone, he asked for a bowl of mush, declaring that the putrid prison fare would kill him. The officer in charge had a eloquent answer: 'Then let him die, God damn him, he deserves nothing else.'
"A pattern for unprecedented terror in America was being set ... ."

If you are imaging that Grenfell perished in his own filth, he didn't. Like a number of other people who have sworn that they would perish if not released from prison, he had a number of years to go. Giving what we learn about Grenfell, I wouldn't be surprised if he was malingering and had previously exasperated his captors. One certainly might fault his captor's attitude, but snarling prison guards, for better or worse, are not "unprecedented". Carter is a little vague about just what form this wave of nationwide terror took, telling us that neighbor informed upon neighbor, not something more concrete like claiming that the population of Bryantown was hauled off to prison camps. (They weren't.)

I want to make it clear: if the trial of the accused was a farce undertaken in hysteria, it is a serious matter, it just doesn't rank with the Reign of Terror. Carter continues on like this, likening the crowds surrounding the Old Capitol Prison to the crowds around the guillotine.

At the trial, Carter seems to be indifferent to whether testimony is true or false; he seems to dismiss it on the grounds that it is unkind. Lloyd and Weichmann, he feels, shouldn't have testified against Mrs. Surratt because they had had personal dealings with her. It was a breach of hospitality. He brings up the question of whether or not the charges against Mudd were sufficiently clear; in a moot court held in 1993, the lawyers pointed out that Mudd's lawyer didn't raise these questions until after mounting his defense. If he didn't understand the charges, shouldn't he have requested clarification before putting together a defense?

The second half of the book is somewhat better: there are indeed some shocking incidents of evidence and petitions disappearing, Carter claims that the treatment of the prisoners was selectively harsh. The shifts in life on the island depending on who was in charge, and the unifying effects of the yellow fever epidemic are quite interesting. I am not nearly as sympathetic to Carter regarding the indignity that the white inmates felt when an African-American unit was stationed as guards. I can understand that they felt more indignant, I just don't view this a a legitimate complaint.

I wouldn't recommend this as the only book on Mudd, although it is interesting as part of a program of reading on the subject. I recommend Dr. Mudd and the Lincoln Assassination : the Case Reopened, edited by John Paul Jones, as the best single book that I have read so far. The book contains transcripts of the moot court held in 1993 as well five experts arguing various points of the case, and some added documentation.… (altro)