The Ordeal Of Dr. Mudd

Accused of plotting Lincoln's assassination, he survived a living death to clear his name.

This is the story of Dr. Samuel Mudd of Maryland, who in 1865 was arrested for alleged complicity in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. He was sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor at the American penal colony of Fort Jefferson by an illegal military court. Mudd's only "crime" was to set the broken leg of a mud-caked stranger - who turned out to be John Wilkes Booth. Enduring the cruelties of a sadistic commandant and the condemnation of a nation, his selfless courage and true character are revealed during a yellow fever epidemic and finally earned him a pardon by President Andrew Johnson.