His Name Was (Doctor) Mudd

There has been no more remote U.S. military prison than Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, a spit of land comprising the southernmost Florida Keys.

It was to this prison fort that four Lincoln assassination co-conspirators were banished over the summer of 1865 after their trial before a military tribunal, but whether one of them -- Dr. Samuel Mudd -- was indeed complicit has remained a subject of controversy for over 140 years.

Mudd was convicted for allegedly knowing that the man he treated for a broken leg at his Bryantown, Maryland home was John Wilkies Booth, but his ancestors have long claimed that the evidence against him was circumstantial.

While that may be so, and Presidents Carter and Reagan, among other notables, have professed Mudd's innocence, I have no doubt that the doctor was complicitous because of his three prior meetings with Booth, one of them arranged by Confederate go-betweens.

Case closed.