-Caveat Lector- This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Enjoy new investment freedom! Get the tools you need to successfully manage your portfolio from Harrisdirect. Start with award-winning research. Then add access to round-the-clock customer service from Series-7 trained representatives. Open an account today and receive a $100 credit! http://www.nytimes.com/ads/Harrisdirect.html \----------------------------------------------------------/ Dr. Richard Mudd, Grandfather Treated Booth, Dies at 101 May 25, 2002 By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN Dr. Richard D. Mudd, who waged a campaign for seven decades seeking to clear his grandfather of complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, died on Tuesday at his home in Saginaw, Mich. He was 101. "I suppose I'm crazy, but the whole conscience of America must purge itself of this horrible injustice," Richard Mudd once said of his crusade on behalf of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, the country physician who attended to John Wilkes Booth hours after he shot Lincoln. As Richard Mudd saw it, his grandfather was an innocent man imprisoned by the verdict of an unconstitutional military proceeding. At the time of his death, Richard Mudd was still waging his fight, his cause pending in a federal appeals court. After shooting Lincoln in his box at Ford's Theater the night of April 14, 1865, Booth fractured a leg jumping onto the stage. In the predawn hours the next day, Booth and an accomplice, David Herold, arrived at the Maryland home of Samuel Mudd, an acquaintance, who set Booth's broken leg and allowed him to rest at his home before he set out for Virginia, where he was shot to death by a Union soldier. Samuel Mudd was accused of aiding Booth's escape, although he maintained that Booth came to his house wearing false whiskers and so he was unaware of his patient's identity, and that he was not even aware at the time that Lincoln had been assassinated. A military commission convicted Dr. Mudd and seven others of conspiring in the assassination. Four were hanged, but the doctor was sentenced to life imprisonment and was taken to Fort Jefferson, an island military prison off Florida. After serving nearly four years of his term, he was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, who cited his help in battling an outbreak of yellow fever at the penitentiary and doubts about his guilt. But the conviction was not expunged. Samuel Mudd died in 1883 at age 49. While Richard Mudd was growing up in Washington - his father, Thomas, a doctor, like his grandfather - he came upon a history of the case put together by his aunt Nettie and learned that his grandfather had been an infamous figure. "My father never mentioned it at all," Richard Mudd related decades later. "It ruined the family and it left a lot of bitterness." Richard Mudd obtained bachelor's, master's, Ph.D. and medical degrees from Georgetown University in the 1920's. He was a longtime doctor for General Motors in Michigan and served as a military doctor. But all the while Richard Mudd was consumed with clearing his grandfather's name, maintaining not only that Samuel Mudd was innocent but that use of a military commission to try the eight defendants was unconstitutional because the civil courts were functioning. He lectured on the Lincoln assassination, received letters of support from Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, obtained resolutions in state legislatures backing his cause and even orchestrated a bumper-sticker campaign proclaiming "Free Dr. Mudd." In 1992, in response to Richard Mudd's plea, the Army Board for Correction of Military Records recommended that the military commission's 1865 guilty verdict be set aside on the grounds that Samuel Mudd should have been tried by a civilian jury. But the Department of the Army rejected the recommendation, declaring in part that it was not the board's role to settle historical disputes. A federal judge declined to overrule that decision. The constitutional issue will next go before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which has scheduled oral arguments for September. Richard Mudd's son Thomas said he expected to substitute for his father as the plaintiff. Philip A. Gagner, a Washington lawyer, is representing the family. Samuel Mudd's fate may have contributed to the popularity of the expression "his name is mud," though the saying most likely goes back to the "mud press," scandalous newspapers of pre-Civil War days, said the authors of the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (Harper & Row, 1988), William and Mary Morris. Richard Mudd told USA Today in an interview last year, "I'm very proud that my name is Mudd." He had even assembled 2,000 pages of a family genealogy. In addition to his son Thomas, of Saginaw, Richard Mudd is survived by a son Richard Jr., of San Antonio, and four daughters, Johanna Vargas, Rose Marie Nickodemus and Stella Thelen, all of Saginaw, and Mary McHale, of Suitland, Md.; 35 grandchildren and 58 great-grandchildren. His wife, Rose, died in 1998. The television journalist Roger Mudd is a member of the extended family. Richard Mudd cited a constitutional issue and his belief in his grandfather's innocence through the years. But as a third-generation doctor, he also viewed his ancestor's plight in the light of medical ethics. As he put it: "I have always felt that my grandfather had the same right as any doctor to treat a man who comes to him with a broken leg without being sentenced to life in jail for it." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/obituaries/25MUDD.html?ex=1023353066&ei=1&en=44b0cfbaeff49520 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
