Samuel Mudd - Posthumous Rehabilitation Attempts

Posthumous Rehabilitation Attempts

Mudd's grandson, Dr. Richard Mudd, tried unsuccessfully to clear his grandfather's name from the stigma of aiding John Wilkes Booth. In 1951, he published The Mudd Family of the United States, an encyclopedic two-volume history of the Mudd family in America, beginning with Thomas Mudd who arrived from England in 1665. A second edition was published in 1969.

Richard Mudd petitioned several successive Presidents, receiving replies from Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Carter, while sympathetic, responded that he had no authority under law to set aside the conviction; Reagan that he had come to believe that Samuel Mudd was innocent of any wrongdoing. In 1992 Representatives Steny Hoyer and Thomas W. Ewing introduced House Bill 1885 to overturn the conviction, but it failed while in committee. Mudd then turned to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, which recommended that the conviction be overturned on the basis that Mudd should have been tried by a civilian court. The recommendation was rejected by Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army William D. Clark. Several other legal venues were attempted, ending in 2003 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused the case, stating that the deadline for filing had been missed.

St. Catharine, also known as the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.