An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [99]
Of course, the fate of Dr. Samuel Mudd is well-known to all. Only within the last decade or so has his name been cleared in the assassination of President Lincoln. Mudd was sent to Fort Jefferson Prison on Dry Tortugas, an island a hundred miles off the coast of Florida. There he remained until 1868, when yellow fever broke out in the prison. Dr. Mudd offered his services and got the epidemic in hand. Officers of the fort appealed to President Johnson, asking for a pardon for Mudd, and this was done on February 8, 1869. Mudd took up his old life and died in 1882. I made him a friend of Uncle Valentine.
The Sultana riverboat disaster happened exactly as I depicted it, on April 27, 1865. And the accident with General George Armstrong Custer's horse in the Grand Review parade really happened, too.
Yes, they did hang Annie Surratt's mother. Annie did wait outside the gate for her mother's body, and they did refuse to give it to her. Johnny Surratt did stay away. Since his friendship with Emily is of my making, so, too, is the letter he wrote to her when he was in hiding. He did, however, have "a man in Washington" who was supposed to keep him informed about his mother's trial. This information was taken from a lecture Johnny Surratt gave on December 6, 1870, at Rockville, Maryland, on the conspiracy and assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
While his mother's trial was going on, Johnny was hidden by priests in Canada, then fled to Liverpool, England. From there he went to Rome, where he enlisted in the Papal Zouaves under an assumed name. In April 1866 he was recognized, and in November he was sent back to America. Some sources say Annie was living back in Washington and visited him in prison while he was on trial, and brought food. Their brother Isaac was at the trial, too. He was older than both Johnny and Annie, went south to join the Confederate army at the start of the war, did not return home, and was not in contact with his family until after his mother's hanging. I saw no need to bring him into the book.
Johnny Surratt's trial went on for sixty-two days. In the trial, a diary of John Wilkes Booth was introduced. Nobody had ever known before of such a diary. It proved that neither Mary Surratt nor her son, Johnny, knew of the assassination attempt. They knew only of a plot to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for ransom until Confederate prisoners held up North could be released.
The jury could not agree. Johnny Surratt was held for a new trial, but months later he was allowed out on bail and there never was a new trial. Johnny tried lecturing for a while, but it didn't work. He spent the rest of his life as an obscure clerk and died in 1916.
Annie Surratt does not appear in any factual accounts after the trial of her brother Johnny. Nobody knows what happened to her.
As for the nightflowers: My research tells me there are four hundred fifty members of the cactus family that bloom at night. The night-blooming cereus is one of them. The author of The Evening Garden, Peter Loewer, writes, "I have seen it bloom in September at Mohonk Manor, New York's famous resort hotel on the Hudson River." He furthermore writes, "These plants are native to every state in the United States with the exception of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont." Of the yucca, he says, "During the day, the white, six-petaled blossoms hang down like bells at rest.