The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators

The following is a closing argument in the defense of Dr. Samuel Mudd during the Lincoln conspiracy trial by his defense attorney general Thomas Ewing. The defense attorney general was also the first chief justice of Kansas and leading free state advocate, Union Army general during the American Civil War, and two-term United States Congressman from Ohio, 1877–1881. His client, Samuel Alexander Mudd Sr. was an American physician who was later imprisoned for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth concerning the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.