John Wilkes Booth shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, but he wasn't the only one who tried.
This is the story of the Lincoln assassination conspirator the next president pardoned.
On March 1, 1869, President Andrew Johnson issued a pardon to Samuel Arnold,
one of the men found guilty of a conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.
President Johnson didn’t explain this act of mercy, and it’s impossible now to know exactly why
he pardoned the accused man. The first possible explanation is the debate about whether Arnold
was even a part of the assassination. There’s certainly concrete evidence that backed up the
notion that Arnold was part of a plot to kidnap the President in March of 1865. The
plan was to ransom the president for Confederate prisoners. The scheme never managed to materialize
due to Lincoln's changing schedule, and Arnold ultimately abandoned the plans.
Unfortunately, one month later, a member of the original kidnapping plot, John Wilkes Booth,
assassinated President Lincoln. This act of violence occurred while the President
and the First Lady watched a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington,
D.C. Several letters appeared to offer definitive proof that Arnold was involved with the conspiracy
to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. The evidence for his involvement in the assassination,
on the other hand, was much flimsier. Arnold's attorney, Walter Cox, argued that Arnold
had backed out from the kidnapping plot. Historian James Thompson explains the justification:
"He leaves after that plot fails. He is not involved in the assassination.
He is actually at the time of the assassination working at fortress Monroe."
A military tribunal nevertheless found Arnold guilty and sentenced him to life
in Florida's Fort Jefferson. Though ultimately convicted,
there was another reason why Arnold may have been pardoned. Near the point where Arnold
was granted his freedom, there was a lot of public attention on Arnold's co-conspirator
and cellmate, Samuel Mudd. Mudd was a doctor from Maryland who had met John Wilkes Booth just once
before the assassination. Mudd had set Booth's broken leg while the assassin was on the run
following Lincoln’s assassination. This essentially sealed his fate as a co-conspirator.
Mudd claimed that he only helped Booth because of his position as a doctor. His defense failed to
persuade. He was found guilty and sentenced to a life of hard labor at Fort Jefferson.
Mudd and Arnold had served several years in a cell together when yellow fever ripped
through Fort Jefferson. The epidemic killed the prison's physician, Joseph Sim Smith. Because of
his previous life as a doctor, Mudd was placed in charge of medical care at Fort Jefferson. He found
a great deal of success in treating the sick men. This was due largely to his focus on constant care
and diligent cleanliness, rather than using the traditional method of simply quarantining the ill.
President Johnson was petitioned by a grateful soldier to offer Mudd clemency in return for his
work. Mudd's wife publicized the petition, and it quickly garnered widespread support and resulted
in his eventual pardon. Though Arnold played no part in the medical team, the fact that he was
present during the epidemic, and Mudd's cellmate, might have earned him clemency-by-association.
His pardon came less than eight weeks after Mudd. But there is still one more reason why Arnold may
have been given clemency by President Andrew Johnson. The new Commander-in-chief was focused
on uniting the country after the brutal Civil War, even if that meant alienating Republicans in the
process. He issued a proclamation on May 29, 1865, that offered amnesty to a majority of Confederate
officials and soldiers. The condition of that amnesty was swearing allegiance to the United
States and freeing any slaves that were still in bondage. Johnson claimed that the proclamation was
necessary to focus on punishing the small group of leaders of the Confederacy. Nevertheless,
it’s considered one of the most controversial uses of a pardon in Presidential history.
The initial pardon excluded fourteen groups of Confederates to target the ringleaders
of the rebellion. But on September 7, 1867, President Johnson decided to expand the pardon
in an effort to hasten the Reconstruction efforts. He continued to increase the reach of his mercy,
and by Christmas of 1868, almost all former Confederates were forgiven.
Considering Johnson's pattern of leniency, it’s not improbable to
guess that the president wanted to finish his policy for clemency before he left office.
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