April 15, 1865

Abstract

April 15, 1865 William A. Tidwell On April 15, 1865, nearly a week after the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, Confederate and Union cavalry had a skirmish in St. Mary's County, Maryland. The skirmish occurred the day after John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln, and it has been largely ignored—obscured by a dispute between two Union officers and overwhelmed by the many activities concerned with the pursuit of the assassins. Yet this skirmish played an important part in the way in which the pursuit unfolded and may help to explain some of the actions of Booth and the individuals who assisted him in his escape. While it provides no certain answer to the role played by Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd, it adds one more possible item to those linking Dr. Mudd and Booth in a common enterprise. According to the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C, April 15, 1865, was a cloudy day with rain beginning at 7:30 a.m., shortly after the death of Abraham Lincoln. The technician recording the weather added a note at the bottom of the page: "the building was draped in mourning for the death of the President of the United States." At the end ofthe day he recorded the minimum and maximum temperatures as 47° and 67° Fahrenheit. The Nautical Almanac shows that at that date and latitude the sun rises shortly after 5:30 a.m. and sets at about 6:30 p.m. It was a cold, wet day, but the weather was not bad enough to prevent movement.' John Wilkes Booth, who thought of himself as an American Brutus, and his companion, David Herold, had reached the home of Dr. Mudd in southern Maryland about four o'clock in the early hours of April 15th, before the rain began. Dr. Mudd lived four miles north of Bryantown in Charles County, Maryland, on a peninsula of roughly thirty by one hundred miles, bounded by the Potomac and Patuxent Rivers. This peninsula included the southern part of Prince George's County and all of Charles and St. Mary's Counties.2 1 Photostat copy oflocal weather observations for April 1 865, U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington . D.C. 2 Statements of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, Apr. 21, 1865, M-599, reel 5, frames 0212-25, 0226-39, Civil War History, Vol. xlii. No. 3 © 1996 by The Kent State University Press APRIL 15, I865 221 -Si Surratt's Tavern Beantown Bryantown Canter) (Swart) Government Farms ,,*.,„; Charlotte Hall -¦ Aliens Fresh ftChaptico Leonarotown SOUTHERN MARYLAND 1865 - Towns/homes ?/. Government farms --. Probabte area of skirmish — Roads Streams Southern Maryland, 1 865 In spite of its proximity to Washington, this southern Maryland peninsula was largely isolated from the contemporary world. It held many tobacco farms and produced some corn, wheat, and vegetables. There were a few small villages and isolated country stores, but on the whole the area was sparsely populated and heavily forested. There were no railroads or major turnpikes. Several estuaries of the Potomac cut deeply into the southern coast, and the Wicomico River, the largest of the estuaries, was fed by streams that flowed through two long, narrow swamps that formed obstacles to ground travel. These National Archives; Jack D. Brown et al., Charles County, Maryland (Charles County Bicentennial Committee, 1976). 222CIVIL WAR HISTORY were Zekiah Swamp, about twelve miles long, which passed Dr. Mudd's residence and reached its upper end a short distance away, and Gilbert's Swamp, shorter than Zekiah Swamp but nonetheless a substantial barrier for several miles.3 The people of southern Maryland were strongly anti-Union and provided substantial numbers ofsoldiers to the Confederate army. In addition, the remoteness of the area provided many opportunities for exploitation as a route for the smuggling of items needed in the Confederacy and for the movement of secret agents. The Union also exploited the remoteness of the area by establishing the Hammond Hospital for convalescing Union wounded and Camp Hoffman, one of its major prisons for captured Confederates, at Point Lookout, the extreme terminus ofthe peninsula where the Potomacjoins Chesapeake Bay. There were also small Union facilities in the area; a supply depot at...