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John Wilkes Booth and his followers planned to kidnap President Lincoln, but it escalated into a murder plot. Booth assassinated Lincoln, but failed to kill Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward. Booth was later killed, and conspirators were hanged or imprisoned. Dr. Samuel Mudd’s involvement was contested, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment before being pardoned.
The events culminating in the assassination of the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, are known as the Lincoln Conspiracy. This conspiracy involves the murderous machinations of its main instigator, Shakespearean actor and Southern sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth. His band of followers agreed to his plan to rid the Union of all its leaders in one fell swoop. On Apr. 16-14, at 1865:10, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward were all destined to die at the hands of Booth and his accomplices, but as was the case with the best schemes of mice and men, everything has gone astray.
Lincoln’s conspiracy began as a plot to kidnap the president shortly after his second inauguration. Originally, Booth plotted to kidnap Lincoln, hold him prisoner in the southern capital of Richmond, and exchange him for Confederate soldiers held captive in various Union prisons. The plan was thwarted and soon the conspiracy escalated from a kidnapping to a murder plan. A truculent and angry man, Booth hated what he called the president’s “northern abolitionism” and considered the declaration of martial law in his home state of Maryland a clear abuse of executive power.
As part of the plan, General Ulysses S. Grant was scheduled to attend a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater that April evening, but an argument between his wife Julia and Mary Todd Lincoln prevented them from attending. Secretary of State William Seward’s life was saved by a collar he was forced to wear in a carriage accident; he deflected the blows of the knife held by Booth’s accomplice. Another accomplice in the conspiracy, tasked with killing Vice President Johnson at his Kirkwood House residence, made no attempt to do so.
Booth fled the theater, but was tracked down by soldiers and died of a gunshot wound on April 26. Four other members of the Lincoln conspiracy, including the first woman to be hanged in the United States, Mary Surratt, were hanged on July 7, a week after being convicted by a military commission. Four others were sentenced to prison, three to life imprisonment.
One of the most contested convictions was that of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who at first denied knowing who Booth was when he put his ankle on, which broke in his leap from the presidential balcony to the dais on the night of the assassination. Mudd later admitted that he met Booth once. Dr. Mudd was sentenced to life in Devil’s Island for his involvement in the assassination. He served many years before being pardoned, and the expression “his name was mud” comes from this man’s plight.
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