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J01

Words and Their Stories -- a program about special American expressions. Many Americans have used the expression, "Your name will be mud," in the mistaken belief that it had something to do with the kind of dirt or slime that is found in the streets. But the phrase comes from the name of Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd, a physician who fixed the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed President Abraham Lincoln. The murder of Lincoln has been told many times. Briefly here is what happened.

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J02

On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln was watching a play in a Washington theater. A young actor, John Wilkes Booth, sneaked into Lincoln's private box and shot him in the back of the head. Booth then jumped to the stage about three meters below. He fell as he hit the stage, but quickly got up and ran off to the back of the theater. There a young boy with a horse waited for Booth, who jumped on and rode off with the speed of the wind. Booth had broken a bone in his leg when he leaped to the stage and needed a doctor badly. He finally arrived at the home of a doctor whose name was Mudd, Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd. He treated the actor's injured leg without knowing who Booth was. Booth was later captured by Union soldiers in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia. He was shot and dragged out of the burning barn still alive. He died soon after.

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J03

A small group of people helped Booth plan Lincoln's murder. They were all captured and sentenced to death or prison terms. Dr. Mudd had nothing to do with Lincoln's murder or with any of the conspirators who had planned it. All the evidence seems to show that he was an innocent man, but he had given aid to the man who shot Mr. Lincoln. And so, Dr. Mudd was tried as one of the conspirators and sentenced to life imprisonment. In jail, Dr. Mudd saved many prisoners and guards in an epidemic of yellow fever. And President Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869 after the doctor had spent almost four years in jail.

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J04

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln came as a terrible blow to the American people. It filled them with the bitterness that lasted for many years. They hated Booth -- a strange man who. many believed, was insane -- and anybody who had helped him. Dr. Mudd was freed, but people never forgave him. His name passed into American folk speech as something bad, odious. The Mudd family also suffered because of the name. No one knows how many descendants changed their name because of the trouble it caused them.

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J05

Not long ago, however, a state legislator felt that something should be done to do justice to the name of Dr. Mudd. He offered a proposal to the Oklahoma legislature that would declare Dr. Mudd's innocence, and finally clear his name. "The good name of the Mudd family," said the Oklahoma legislator, "has suffered enough in the past century for the injustice done their ancient ancestor."

Voice of America

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