DOOMED TO PRISON

Evening Star, Issue 22350, 28 May 1936, Page 16

DOOMED TO PRISON

FOR A DEED Of MERCY CAPTIVE OF SHARK ISLAND WHEN LINCOLN DIED “ All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here!” Dante, that sad immortal of Italy, saw those words in imagination over the entrance to his dream Inferno, says a writer in the ‘ San Francisco Chronicle. Americans still Jiving remember the same message carved on the door of a certain cell in Fort Jefferson, the crumbling fortress of mystery that '.minutes the dreaded Dry Tortugas off the coast of Florida. . Eroded now by wind, sun, and rain, that message was the human testament (ho most tragic figure in America’s history, of the man whose only crime was an innocent deed of mercy for which he suffered unspeakable anguish as a prisoner in one of the worst of man’s own hells. Samuel Alexander Mudd was his name, a gentle, aristocratic physician who once lived in Maryland, and who was sentenced to life imprisonment for a part in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, a crime which our modern generation now knows he did not commit. An ironically bitter fate set the trap that made this man the most pitiable martyr in our nation’s history. John Wilkes Booth, fleeing by night from the scene of Lincoln’s murder, came to his house seeking medical attention for his leg, broken in the leap to the stage. Unaware of the crime, taken in by Booth’s plausible story, Mudd alleviated Booth’s pain, saw him on his way by morning. When Mudd heard of the crime ho immediately communicated his suspicions to searching troops, who were thus enabled to run Booth to earth. Then they returned to arrest and convict Dr Mudd as a conspirator in the murder of the President! A COURT MARTIAL. If the shock of Lincoln’s murder had not come so soon on the heels of the ravages of war. things might have fared hotter with Dr Mudd. But in blind fury and grief the nation sought blood to repay that of the beloved President, and all who stood in the way of revenge, innocent as well as guilty, wore crushed. Although peace had been restored in 1805, a court martial was summoned to sit in judgment on the seven actual accomplices and Mudd. This action in itself was contrary to all guarantees of constitutional justice, but temperate counsel and advice were swept away in the emotional storm In an impassioned address to the court General Ewing, who served as counsel for Mudd, sought to retrieve his hopeless case by an appeal to rea-

son and justice. He showed that the witnesses had been suborned and perjured. He proved that one witness'was actually a private detective; that another, Daniel I. Thomas, a neighbour of the doctor, was a moral and physical defective, condemned even by his own brother; that Negroes who gave damaging testimony were overwhelmingly rebutted by others. But justice was morally blind and went forward to crush its helpless victim. Dr Mudd suffered untold agonies while awaiting sentence. Four of the actual accomplices wore sent to the gallows and the doctor daily awaited his own last summons. Then finally he learned that lie had been sentenced to life imprisonment at Albany. That was a jubilant day for him. There was hope of obtaining a writ of habeas corpus which would assure him trial in a civil court. He knew that he could prove his innocence. But even that last hope was destroyed when he was hurried from gaol at night and shipned to the Federal prison in the Dry Tortugas—that unspeakable garrison of felons and murderers on an island in the Dry Tortugas. HAUNT OF PIRATES. There has been a strange and sinister history about this grim citadel in the Caribbean as far back as the local historians can remember. That the pirates who roamed the Spanish Main —Morgan, Captain Kidd, and others of their ilk—had once used this tiny island for a haven there was no doubt. For treasure hunters it was a favourite haunt. They turned up caches of as much as 1,000 dollars (£200) in stained coins, and sometimes made grisly finds of a skeleton in ancient armour. Then, sometime about IS4C, the United States Government settled on this spot ns the strategic point to guard against attack from the south. Tho grandest masonry fortress in the United States was conceived and erected on the spot. How _ many labourers died of fever, accident, and tropical ills to erect the massive hexagonal structure that covered 16 acres, will probably never bo accurately known. But, for those who rail against the folly of Government spending to-day, there is food for thought in the fact that 20,000,000 dollars (£4,000,000) were expended on this squat, ugly mass with its bristling guns that never fought a battle in its 00 years of existence! When Dr Mudd arrived at this blistering fortress it was no longer on guard against attack from without, but armed against assault from the thousand wild, unruly, intractable men horded on the tiny 25-acre island under a military force of GOO soldiers, mostly negroes. Even the absurd moat which ran along two walls of the fortress and formerly served no purpose except to breed mosquitoes, was adapted to holding the prisoners by some ingenious commander. He had it filled with vicious, man-eating sharks, who slithered about in its waters as a terrible warning to the men who would try to escape. MANY TRIED. Life fur tho prisoner was so desperately hitter, however, that many men did attempt to escape. Dr Mudd among

them. He was intensely liated by the men who guarded him. and the gentle, aristocratic physician who had never done hard physical labour in his life was set at the back-breaking job of scrubbing bastions while in _ chains. Prisoners by the score fell victim of the deadly yellow fever and to scurvy. In one of his letters Mudd points out that the convict mortalities were many times that of the hired labour, because the prisoners were systematically underfed and abused. For eight months, from January to August of 1867, the convicts subsisted almost entirely without vegetables. The meat offered them was putrid and in many cases poisonous. Although Dr Mudd had the moral support of his “ Darling Frank ” —as he addressed his wife, Sarah Mudd, in many letters — there wore times when he despaired of ever seeing freedom, entertained the most desperate thoughts. One of his own letters testifies to the depth of his despair “ Had we been ordered out and shot, it would have been much kinder than the treatment we received. We are treated in every respect ns the most ferocious wild beasts. . . . Decently a prisoner, being a little unruly, was shot and killed by a guard. A day of fortune came to'' him. How long shall" mine be delayed?” It is probable that Dr Mudd attempted his escape when he was in such a frame of mind as the letter seems to indicate. But that desperate effort was doomed to failure, and he was returned to Fort Jefferson, chained hand and foot, to languish in a tiny, dank, solitary cell. For a while additional guards kept vigilant watch over him in his cell. Then, when he was removed from solitary, Dr Mudd was forced to wheel sand and clean bricks in the torturing, maddening sun. DISEASE. How long the frail doctor’s physique and tottering mind could have stood up under this inhuman torture is a doubtful point. But a day of good fortune did' come to him—although it brought terror and disease to the island, converted it into a shambles. The sporadic attacks of yellow fever which had long plagued the island, suddenly took an alarming upturn. Years would pass before Walter Heed would do his heroic work to reveal the mosquito as the carriers of this' malignant fever. Mystified medical men of the period after the Civil War balked in their every attempt to localise the cause of the disease spoke of miasmas that carried yellow fever, speculated without result, and fought it like a terrible assailant in the dark. As the fever cases mounted and men died, the rude hospital proved insufficient, and a second, third, and fourth were hastily constructed to take care ■of the overflow. Hysteria gripped captives and captors alike. To the fever the soldiers were just the same as the captives, and soldier and prisoner died indiscriminately. Finally, the exhausted army doctor at the post was stricken and retired to a bed with the fever. Ho succumbed quickly to its rigours, but before ho passed he admitted that he was relatively unequipped to cope with the plague, because he had never seen a

case of yellow fever before he cams to the island, HIS CHANCE, Help was a hundred miles away, th« garrison was desperate. There was only one man who could stem the tide of disease that threatened to sweep the island clear of life, and he was tho most hated man in prison—Dr Samuel Alexander Mudd. Dr Mudd knew yellow fever. He had served in a Baltimore hospital through the epidemic of 1855, and was thoroughly acquainted with the technique of fever-fighting. With a vigour and courage that hardly fitted the broken prisoner, he set up an entirely new hospital system. A month and a-half after the beginning of the epidemic, Mudd himself was severely stricken, but by that time reinforcements had arrived from the mainland to stamp out the epidemic that the brave doctor had stemmed singlehandedly. Mudd returned to his cell, a slightly larger one, but he still longed pathetically for freedom and the opportunity to again see his wife and children. The grateful men at the fortress drew up a glowing testimonial to his courage and unselfishness which should have been sufficient to secure his freedom. But the malevolent fate that pursued Dr Mudd decreed that it should never reach President Johnson. His pardon came two years later, secured bv the unflagging efforts of bis wife/ who had sacrificed her fortune and her health in the fight for. the husband she knew was innocent. Ami when Dr Mudd went away from the Dry Tortugas he was the friend of the men who had hated him when h# was sent to them. .