National Park After Dark - A Desolate Prison: Dry Tortugas National Park

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Join us this week as we head to Dry Tortugas National Park, but before we can go there we need to take a deep dive into some U.S history. We're going all the way back to the 1860's into the Civil War and following along with John Wilkes Booth after he assassinates Abraham Lincoln. When Dr. Samuel Mudd gets convicted after helping John when he is injured fleeing the scene of the assassination, he is sent to the most desolate prison in the US - Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas. The conditions are horrid and being imprisoned in a place surrounded by ocean there is no escape.... Or is there? For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!BetterHelp: Take charge of your mental health. NPAD listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/NPADWicked Clothes: NPAD listeners get 10% off of any purchase when you use our discount code NPAD at check out or go to our link www.wickedclothes.com/NPAD For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally, breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs.

You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear open that envelope? It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic.

Fort Jefferson and Dry Tortuga's National Park is picturesque. An old brick fortress surrounded by beautiful turquoise waters built on an island of beautiful sand and coral. A tropical paradise fit for a furrow. postcard. 80,000 visitors hop on a boat and travel here every single year to stare in awe of this beautiful structure and the never-ending ocean views in every direction. When their trip is over, they get back on the boat and they head home. But what if you couldn't leave? To someone visiting this island, it seems like a paradise. But to someone who is stuck here, it would be hell on earth. Dry tortugas is desolate, dry and hot.

There is no fresh water source here. The only permanent inhabitants of this island are the birds who have freedom to come and go as they please, and insects. The center of attention of this park to which people come from all over the world to sea was once America's largest military prison, a place of horrid conditions, death, and disease. A place that housed only soldiers or criminals of the highest magnitude. You may ask yourself, what crime would you have to commit to be banished to this island with no hopes of seeing your family or friends ever again? Well, I can tell you, that crime would be conspiring to kill the president of the United States. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Welcome back everyone to National Park After Dark. I'm Danielle.

And I'm Cassie. It seems like today we're going back to Florida. Our second visit to the state because we did the Everglades. Well, technically our third because I did the Everglades episode. I did a campfire bonus story on Patreon in the Everglades as well. And now we're here and try Tortugas. So I'm pumped. A lot of stuff happens in Florida.

I think if you've ever seen the news, everything is Florida man, Florida woman. And we are, it's the same thing for national parks. Yeah. happened there. I will say the best haunted tour I ever did was in Ebor City, which is outside of Tampa. And they had a very, very, very cool, haunted, creepy, historic nightwalk of the town. It wasn't super scary. Like, you would have enjoyed it too. It was history with a darker twist. I'm looking at you like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. I'm trying to convince you like we're going to go. But yeah. So if anyone has ever been to Ebor City or is thinking about it, that was.

really a cool highlight. But, um, cool. Yeah. Let's go to dry tortugas because mentally I want to be there. I don't know if you'll feel the same way when I'm done with this episode. Oh, okay. Like right now it sounds great. I want to be there. Actually, it would be a really cool place to visit. But yes, I want to go there too. So like we always do, let's learn a little bit about dry tortugas. Dry Tortugas National Park is located in the ocean of the Gulf of Mexico. So it's around 68 miles west of Florida, and it is part of the state of Florida, so it's 68 miles west of Key West. The park itself is known for its abundance of sea life. It's coral reefs that are filled with lots of different colors. There's also a lot of shipwrecks that surround it, and it's known for

sunken treasures. Jaitortugas is a tropical island with hot weather year round. It is made up of seven different islands, protected coral reefs, and it preserves Fort Jefferson. Fort Jefferson is an uncompleted military fort designed for warfare and was used in fights against piracy on the island. It was equipped with cannons and heavy artillery and it is constructed of 6 million red bricks. The U.S. Army began building the fort in 1855 and it was named after the U.S.'s third president, Thomas Jefferson. The fort employed civilian carpenters, masons, general laborers, and also, also Key West's enslaved people to construct the fort. It was in September 1861 that they started using soldiers who became prisoners as laborers

in the fort as well. Any soldiers who deserted the war and were found guilty instead of being sentenced to death, President Abraham Lincoln decided that they could be imprisoned on Dry Tortugas instead. And then if they were imprisoned there, they were then forced to build up the prison? Yeah, exactly. You're building your own cage. So by June of 1863, this was after the Emancipation Proclamation. So a lot of the story is going to be going on during the Civil War.

So by June of 1863, after the Emancipation Proclamation, most of the African-American enslaved people were released from the island and the laborers who built this fort mostly consisted of soldiers and imprisoned soldiers. So the only prisoners at this time were soldiers who had been convicted of crimes like treason, but on July 24, 1865, they let in the first four civilian prisoners, Samuel Mudd, Edmund Spangler, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Loughlin. These were four men who were accused and convicted of being involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And that is what brings us to our story today. Shows how much history I remember from school because none of those names, except for maybe Spangler, that's the only one that kind of rings the bell. I don't remember any of those names.

I actually learned a lot from the story that I didn't remember from history class. And I feel like so some of this you guys might have learned from your classes in high school, but maybe you don't remember or maybe you never learned it. So we're going to go into a lot of American history today. What about John Wilkes Booth? What about him? Oh, he's in this story. All right. So although our story is going to bring us to Dry Tortuga's National Park eventually,

it's actually going to begin somewhere else. And it's going to begin at a National Historic Site in Washington, D.C. We're going to talk about John Wilkes Booth. And if you don't know who he is, you're going to learn very fast. So John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10th, 1833 in Bel Air, Maryland. He was born to two British parents who had relocated to America. And by the age of 16, he was very interested in politics, but he was also very interested in theater. So he began practicing and studying Shakespeare.

He started getting these big roles in performances as young as 17 years old. And his career ended up taking off, and he actually became a very well-known actor, and he ended up going on tour and traveling to New York, to Boston, all over the East Coast, and performed in lead role performances. So he was widely known for his acting. He was handsome. He played these really romantic roles. And a lot of the roles that he played were in Shakespeare Place.

When the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, John Wilkes Booth voiced his opinion very loudly in favor of the South and the continuation. of slavery. And he called the Southern fights very heroic. And this ended up in raging a ton of northern local citizens and they were calling for his career to be over. But this didn't happen. His career continued on and he continued to thrive. So as the Civil War continued and Abraham Lincoln, who was famously known for continuously fighting for the abolishment of slavery, John Wilkes Booth, his hatred for the president grew. And the South was losing the war. So John started to derive a plan to help the southern states win. He wanted to kidnap the president, Abraham Lincoln, for the duration of the rest of the war to give the South an

upper hand. Because if they didn't have a president who was working against them, they would have a larger chance to beat the North. I didn't know he wanted to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. Yeah. So his first original plan was that he wanted to kidnap him for the war. That way they would have this upper hand because their president would be gone and the south could kind of take over. This plan changed, however. The commander of the Confederate Army ended up surrendering to the north and this was a huge indication that they were about to lose the war. John decided that kidnapping the president wasn't going to be enough. He had to assassinate him. He learned that Abraham Lincoln would be attending a show at the Ford Theater, which is now a historical site. And because of John's high,

ranking status. He had access to this theater and he actually had access to the area where the president would be. And it was interesting because Abraham Lincoln had actually seen him perform and invited him to come into his booth previously to meet him because he thought that his performances were so good. John had actually declined to ever meet him when he was invited. Oh, yeah, this I did not know. There's a lot of like interesting stuff here. He had access to the president was going to be, so he began making plans of his assassination, and his first step was that he needed a getaway horse and an escape route. He made arrangements with a man named James W. Pumfrey, who owned a stable and ended up supplying him with a getaway horse. On the evening of April 14,

1865, John entered the theater at 10.10 p.m. It was at 10.14 that he slipped into the presidential box. He stood directly behind Abraham Lincoln and shot him in the back of the head with a 41 caliber pistol. As he went to flee, Henry Rathbone, a military officer in the presidential box, attempted to stop him. As he did so, John thrust a knife into his abdomen and took off. John jumped from the presidential box onto the stage of the Ford Theater and raised his knife to the crowd. Six semper Tyrannus, he exclaimed to the onlooking audience, Latin for, Thus always to tyrants. The theater broke out in hysteria, and before anyone could stop him, he ran out the stage door

and into an alley where his friend Edmund Spangler had been holding onto his getaway horse for him. John jumped onto the horse and began galloping towards southern Maryland. His friend David Harold joined him, as he was the one who planned the safest route for him to escape on. They headed on horseback through dense forests and swampy areas until they got into rural Virginia. This guy has the flare for the dramatics. He's jumping from boxes and going on stage and he rides off on his horse. That is just wild. I will say that in retrospect, I am so happy that my eighth grade, so my eighth grade trip, it was like a big deal. And every grade

above me, tradition was to go to New York City for the eighth grade trip. My grade comes. They're like, all right, we're switching things up. You're going to go to D.C. And we were pissed because all the other grades went to Times Square and saw a Broadway show and the whole nine yards. And then we're like, oh, you get to go to D.C. And we were all kind of bummed. But thinking about it, I mean, I went to the Ford Theater and then we went next door to that area where Abraham Lincoln was taken before he died or where he died and we did all that stuff. And in retrospect, that's a cool experience. And I'm glad I went about it. You know exactly where I'm talking about. You've seen the stage he was standing on. Okay, I didn't know that this I didn't get that information. I mean, I will say

how much did my eighth grade brain absorb of that trip? Probably a minimal amount, you know, I don't know. But now looking back on it, I'm really happy that I went. I would love to go back now knowing all this other information. History is so much cooler than I ever. realized because after starting this podcast and doing all this research and getting all this information, it's like, wow, there is so much history in all these places and all these like really interesting stories that a lot of times obviously with our content is very morbid, but very interesting. I would look at all these places a little bit different when I was visiting. Absolutely. Okay. So he's riding into the forest with Spangler or something or who?

David Harold. Oh, Spangler was just holding his horse. Yeah, so when he, so one thing I read was the person that he got the horse from warned John that the horse would take off if he wasn't being held. So he had to arrange for a friend to hold on to the horse and stand with him. Okay, so this is a very intricate process, very planned out. Very planned out. And David Harold knew the area really well where he could go through the kind of back country of the area and not get caught. And he also knew a good route that was more of a Confederate. friendly area so he would be less at risk of someone reporting him. Okay, I see. Like you said,

they headed through the dense forest. They're in rural Virginia. And it's a little unclear exactly what, where and how this happened, but somewhere along this journey, John was injured. His horse fell and John injured his leg. It was broken and he needed medical attention. It was just before dawn on April 15th when they arrived at Dr. Samuel Mudd's home. A doctor that was would be able to help fix his leg. Dr. Samuel Alexander Mud was born on December 20th, 1833. He was born in Maryland, only 30 miles from Washington, D.C. He graduated from Baltimore Medical College, and he began practicing medicine in 1856. On top of being a doctor, he was also a farmer. He had a wife, Sarah Francis Dyer, and the two of them had nine children together. So Dr. Mud

and John had met less than a year beforehand in November. John had been looking to buy a horse and some land and he became acquainted with Dr. Mud at that point. The following day, John came to the doctor's house and bought a horse from him. And not long after that, Samuel Mud met up with John and one of his friends to get drinks at a bar. And then they met a handful of other times after that as well. So that morning when Harold and John showed up to the doctor's house, it was no coincidence that they happened to find him and they needed help. They knew where he lived and that he was a doctor. And so Dr. Mud reset his leg and put like a bandage or a cast or something on it to help it heal correctly and get him moving again, basically. The next day,

they ended up at the home of Samuel Cox and he allowed them into his home and gave them both a meal. The two stayed at his house for a few hours, and then Samuel directed them into a thick area of woods that they could hide in nearby. Meanwhile, the country had been mourning Abraham Lincoln's death. In both the north and the south parts of the country, people were opposed to slavery and agreed on the stance on ending it. Learning of his death was devastating, and they put out a $100,000 reward for any information leading to John Booth's arrest. Millions of people came out for Abraham Lincoln's funeral. And after the funeral, they loaded his casket and his body onto a nine-car funeral train and set it off on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. So during this 1,662-mile ride,

7 million people lined the railroad tracks holding signs saying things like the darkest hour in history, and he lives in the heart of his people. The South generally disagreed with John's actions, and they said that he was not a Southern hero. and that his actions were actually considered a huge tragedy. So he went and did this thinking that he was helping the South in their cause and their war. And after his death, the South was like, no, this was horrible. We don't agree with what he did for the most part. So the two of them stayed inside the woods of Maryland waiting for a good time to emerge and continue.

By April 20th, they had learned that some of his fellow conspirators to the kidnapping plot had already been arrested. So there were huge man hunts out there and were searching for him, and they were starting to get information on where he could be. Eventually, they were able to leave the woods that they were hiding in, and they met up with a Confederate agent named William Bryant. He led them to Richard H. Garrett's Farm, which was about two miles south of Port Royal, Virginia. At this point, it's now April 24th. When they were introduced to the family there, they weren't introduced by their real name. And John's leg was explained to be an injury that was sustained in the Battle of Petersburg and that he was actually on his way home. Because of the Civil War that was going on, mail delivery had completely stopped.

And the family actually hadn't even learned of the president's assassination yet. So they had no idea what was going on. Oh, wow. Okay. Somewhere during a conversation over dinner, the topic came up and they learned of the assassination. But the family was still unaware of who John and Harold were and what their relations to it at all. were. So John actually, which I thought was kind of bold of him, asked them if you were to find the man who assassinated him, what would you do? Would you give him up for the reward that's out there

right now? The family responded and they were like, you know, maybe, only because we could really use the money right now. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting.

Watch only on Prime. On April 26th, just two days later after this conversation, soldiers learned of Harold and John's location on the farm. They surrounded the barn in which they were staying in, and Harold surrendered immediately. He came out of the barn and was like, you got me or surrender, don't kill me, kind of thing. But John did not. He was not interested in surrendering.

And he actually said, I'd prefer to put up a fight. You can't just take me down. With those words, the soldiers just set ablaze the barn he was sitting in. Oh, how did I not know this? Okay. I don't know. I didn't know any of this either. That's why I like this history.

So interesting. So they just lit the barn on fire. Yep. Just lit it on fire with him inside. And then one of the soldiers could see him walking around in the barn to try and avoid the fire and shot him. He hit him clean through the neck, but he didn't kill him. Shooting John was not part of the plan at all, and the soldiers had a clear order to take him alive. So they actually dragged John out of the burning building to see if they could keep him alive.

and they dragged him onto the porch of Garrett's house. The bullet had hit three vertebrae in his spinal cord and paralyzed him. John lay there on the porch for three hours, drowning in his own blood that filled up his lungs from his injuries. And then he died just before dawn. Holy smokes. So the soldier that shot him is probably in some shit, I would imagine. Yeah. I read some stuff that they wanted to take him to court.

I don't know if they actually did, but they did. really wanted to take him alive. Okay. Interesting. I guess it makes sense that they would want him alive because with so many people upset, there's the factor of like the American people want to see justice served. And sometimes that comes in the form of criminal proceedings and things like that. And they want answers.

And remember, he's famous. He's a famous actor that did this. So everyone knows who he is. That is so wild when you put it like that. Mm-hmm. Like imagine a favorite. I don't want to put anyone on the spot, like, but okay, Bradley Cooper shoots the president. I don't want to put anyone on the spot, Bradley Cooper, but if you were to shoot the president.

I don't know, he's just the first guy that came to mind. But isn't that bizarre? Yeah. Like a lot of people had gone to his shows. They knew who he was. He was in the paper. They'd seen his picture before. And not as a wanted murderer.

After his death, the government was not done, though. they wanted to bring his co-conspirators to justice and to court. So four people, including Harold, were sentenced to death by hanging and they were all killed on July 7, 1865. Four other co-conspirators were sentenced to a different fate. They were sentenced to life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson located in Dry Tortuga's National Park. Of these people, Dr. Samuel Mudd was one of them. the one that fixed his leg. Yes. And just to clarify, he knew what was up when he was doing that.

Obviously, he was being tried as a co-conspirator. They ended up having a court hearing for him. He was actually originally interviewed by the military on April 18th, just a couple days after John had left his home and after he had helped fix his broken leg. And according to the website, HistoryNet.com, Dr. Mudd originally stated at this interview, I never saw either of the parties before, nor can I conceive who sent them to my house. He was lying because he had met John before, and this was only the beginning of a series of lies that he went on to tell.

So then he changed his story and told them about the time he met John because he bought a horse from him, but then he went on to say that he never saw him again. And this was later proved a lie because there had been three other known meetings that he had had with John. Because of these prior meetings, Dr. Samuel Mudd was quickly convicted and sentenced. But a big thing that he said was, I had nothing to do with this assassination. I'm a doctor. He came to me. He needed help.

It's my job. It's my duty. It's what I've pledged is that if someone is in need, I help them. So that was his stance on it. But they saw lies that he told in a history of knowing him and convicted him based off that. Wow, okay. Because I have a feeling that, or I would think that if he just came out with that right off the bat, of like, yeah, I knew who he was, but this is the pledge I took when I became a physician, that maybe they would have granted him a little more leniency. But because of all those other lies beforehand, they're like, all right, dude, like, you can't be trusted and this is bad news. It's also a different time. I mean, the other four people were sentenced to hanging.

And the crazy thing about I was looking at the dates of when all this happened, and they had like a week between their court date and their death. It's not like today where you get sentenced to death row. You're on it for 20 years. Make sure all the evidence like goes to it. They were convicted and sentenced within the same day and then they were killed a week later. It's also a huge high profile. I mean, not to say that. Yeah.

I guess nowadays it's so much different. Right. It's the president during a war. Yeah. Yeah, so much different. He ended up being sentenced to Fort Jefferson for a life sentence. Being sentenced to Fort Jefferson at face value didn't seem too awful in comparison to other prisons. It was a tropical island.

There's beautiful waters. There's good weather year round. You can be outside. This thought was very short-lived, however. When he first arrived in July of 1865, there were 30 officers and 531 enlisted men that were still using the island for defenses. This desolate island was in fact very busy and there was a lot of work to be done. They used their prisoners and Dr. Mud for labor. It was the prisoner's duty to hoist cannons into position, to build barracks and powder magazines, and it was their job to continue construction of the fort itself. Prisoners needed to continue excavating the moat,

build up the fort brick by brick and fix any damages done during battles. And the battles that they were having, you said it was about piracy or regarding piracy. Yeah. And I actually did read somewhere that the fort was actually never attacked. It was their job to fix it during battles, but I don't think any of it was ever stuff that other people did. It was just like maybe during training or something like that. it was never an actual battle that reached them. Interesting.

Yeah. So the work there was hard and vigorous. The temperatures were hot and dry. There was never rain. There was no fresh water and there was no shade. The island was infested with insects, sand fleas, mosquitoes, and their living quarters had bedbugs. Disease ran rampant throughout the fort with scurvy, diarrhea, and bone fever. Let me tell you, sand fleas are my mortal enemy. I remember when I was in Panama walking the beaches and wanting so badly to enjoy it, but my calves were getting eaten alive with those damn Sam fleas.

Compared to other problems you could have, it seems pretty insignificant and minor, but they're so incessant and it's so annoying. So I understand why it's on this list with diarrhea and scurvy and bone. whatever that was. Well, this island was infested with so many insects and then they had this disease going on and on top of all this, on top of their labor and the insects and the heat and disease and everything, they lived off of a very non-nutritional food. Samuel lived off of bread, coffee, potatoes, and onions. The bread was said that it was made out of flour, bugs, and sticks. so it wasn't good bugs yeah like just not

clean no hygiene like I just imagine they're making this bread and it's literally just like made in pans or whatever that are filled with like dead bugs or shit just flies in it and it's just cooked right in there it's extra protein yeah I guess

speaking of protein meat was imported to the island but it would go bad so quickly because of the heat and the humidity that Samuel wouldn't even eat it because it was that disgusting. And Samuel could hardly take it. He had only been there for two months and he started to plan his escape. While he had been on the island in that brief time, around 30 prisoners had already successfully escaped the island. So prisoners were sneaking onto steamerships that brought supplies to the island and a supply ship by

the name of Thomas A. Scott had left with eight prisoners hidden on it recently and he decided that that would be the good ship to try and escape on. He even tried to throw off any suspicion of himself thinking of escaping by writing letters to his wife that he knew were monitored by the prison, stating that he had no desire to escape because if he was trying to escape, that would prove that he was guilty and he was still adamant that he had nothing to do with the assassination. So he would write her in-depth letters. I could escape. I've had opportunity, but I'm not going to. But then Samuel befriended a crewman on the ship named Henry Kelly. Henry was only about 18 years old at the time and he had agreed to help Samuel in exchange for money. Because the island was so remote, they had less restrictions than prisons and other locations. So while Samuel was a laborer and a nurse inside the prison, when his duties for the day were finished, he was able to roam free around the island. He was expected to sleep inside the fort at night, but there were no formal routine. bed checks to see if the prisoners were actually in bed. The only strict rule that was in place

was on the days that the ships would leave. Prisoners were not allowed to leave the fort until the ship had left. So essentially, he could do whatever he wanted except if he wasn't working as long as no boats were leaving. So the night before he planned his escape, he very freely left the fort and didn't return that night. And nobody noticed. So instead, he slept outside of the fort, in a small shelter and waited until the morning. That following morning, on September 25th, he changed out of his prison clothes into a suit that he had actually worn to the island, and he slyly slipped onto the ship near the coal bunkers

and hid under a platform on the floor and waited for the boat to leave. This is all very, very smart. Very planned out. Yeah. And it does make sense the way that that was operated, because they're on an island. Where are you going to go? So if the only means of transportation to and from the island isn't there, like if there are no boats there, what are you going to do?

Yeah, sure. Go walk around where, like, where you're going to go? Go swim if you want, but there's nothing nearby. You're not going to make it. Right. And there's no water. There's no fresh water anywhere. So even if you did try to leave, you're going to die. Yeah. So I think it was kind of like, yeah, you can take your chances, but there's no way. Pretty much, yeah. This is really cool. Go on. Unfortunately, for Samuel, he was no ordinary prisoner. A prisoner who had involvement in the death of the U.S. president was obviously going to be a very well-known person,

and the guards realized very quickly that he was missing that day, and they reported it. Guards combed the ship, and they found him quickly. They arrested him and began their interrogations, and then they actually threatened to shoot him if he did not give up the person who was helping him. So, at the threat of death, he told them that it was Henry Kelly, and they immediately arrested him, and imprisoned him alongside them. The ironic thing about this is the guards were so focused on Samuel that they didn't even notice that four other prisoners escaped on that same ship that they found him on that same day. Oh, no. Did they make it?

Yeah, they left. They went off to freedom. They were done. Okay, so they are the real underdog champs of this entire story. That's such a good point. It's like, well, we know the attention is not going to be anywhere near us with this high profile thing going on. So we're just going to slowly exit stage left over here and creep her way out. Yeah, whether they saw him get caught and then jumped on the ship after or if they were,

imagine if you were already on the ship and you're hiding somewhere nearby and all of the soldiers come on searching. And then they find the guy next to you and just leave without like noticing you. you still escape the heart racing that would be going on in my chest and that. So Samuel gave up that 18-year-old kid and now he is also imprisoned with him back on dry tortugas. Yep. After this, they actually put Samuel into the what was called the dungeons as punishment. But eventually he was put back out and into his normal routine. So Fort Jefferson had unknowingly created an extremely good environment for mosquitoes and other insects to breed. Because they had no natural source of fresh drinking water, they installed steam condensers to desalinate the seawater to make it possible to drink.

And then the water that they made possible to drink, they stored in these big open containers. So it was basically a breeding ground for mosquitoes. They didn't know this at the time. But these mosquitoes that they were kind of breeding in this area were carrying yellow fever. Of course they were. So yellow fever, when it's found its victims, would bring high fevers and hallucinations. People would bleed from their ears, eyes, and nose. They would vomit black, and their skin would become jaundice, and many of them would die.

Is this why it's called yellow fever because of the jaundice? Yeah, exactly. Oh, and for any non-medical people, their jaundice is when your skin and different parts of, like, in a dog that has jaundice, like, the whites of their eyes. and their gum tissue and things, it becomes a pale yellowy tinge. Oh, like that makes sense now. Okay. The first case in Fort Jefferson occurred on August 18th, 1867. And only two days later, three more people had it as well. Hundreds of soldiers were stationed there and in only one night, 30 of them became sick.

They quickly started putting protocols into place and their on-site doctors Dr. Joseph Sim Smith set up a quarantine zone on Sand Key, which is a tiny island only two miles away. So they were basically taking all the sick people and throwing them onto a isolated island and being like, okay, bye, don't spread yellow fever here. And yellow fever is only transmitted via mosquitoes, correct? Like, it's not person to person. Yeah, you're right. But I did read that in the 1800s during this time, they had no idea where yellow fever was coming from.

So they had no idea it was from the mosquitoes. Right, which is tragic, so tragic. Because it's like you're not combating the problem. And you're just sending them off to an island to die. Right. Oh, God. The doctor who was working all of this and kind of doing stuff with these patients, he contracted the virus shortly after this, and he died after only three days.

Dr. Samuel Mudd ended up offering to take over the main hospital. That was at Fort Jefferson. He wrote, according to this miscarriage, Smithsonian Magazine, deprived of liberty, banished from home, family and friends, bound in chains for having exercised a simple act of common humanity and setting the leg of a man for whose insane act I had no sympathy, but which was in line with my professional calling. And he wrote that as like a he didn't agree with why he was there and he had a huge contempt for the government and the reason why he was imprisoned. But he saw what was going on.

and as a doctor, he volunteered, and once he did, he was completely dedicated to his patient's care. When he stepped up to this role, he immediately shut down the Sankey quarantine, and he believed that they were just being sentenced to death, and they were not actually stopping the spread, and he decided that the infected people were to be quarantined inside of the hospital. At this time in medicine, it was practiced, and Mud also believed in purging and sweating out the virus to treat fevers. So he would administer drugs to induce vomiting and then followed up with a medication to induce sweating. And patients weren't allowed to drink cold water. They could only drink warm tea. What a time to be alive.

For a second, I thought you were going to say it was a time that medicine practice and he believed in bloodletting. Oh, God. Like when you intentionally slice open people's veins to purge out bad blood or whatever. Yeah. No, not that extreme. Okay, but this is still pretty horrific. I mean, induced vomiting and making you sweat when you're really sick sounds horrible. They're already vomiting black substance. Yeah, he believed in getting all of it out.

So he also changed some of the hygiene practices that had been going on. So previously to him stepping in when a patient died, the next patient was put on the same bed with the same linens that the previous patient had been on. Good, good. So, like, so unsanitary, so much bacteria, just a breeding ground for, like, more infections, more diseases, just not great practices. So Dr. Samuel Mudd made sure that every patient that came in was getting clean new sheets and that actual real hygiene was being put in place. By October 1st, almost all of the 300 plus people who were left on the island were sick with

yellow fever, and Samuel never stopped working. He was up day and night with his patients, and they ended up having to send in a second doctor to help him because he was so overloaded with people. Dr. Samuel Mudd had a higher survival rate than almost every other outbreak throughout the country. Of the 270 people he treated, only 38 people, or 14% of them died. To make a little bit of a comparison, the other outbreaks in the country had mortality rates between like 28 to 43%. Oh, wow. Okay. So he's doing something, right? Like changing linens would be a great start. And they actually said that they thought his hygiene practices and how strict he was with it did save a lot of people's lives because people weren't getting all these crazy infections on top of yellow fever

with it. A soldier that he had treated and saved named Lieutenant Edmund L. Zelensky believed that he deserved clemency for the lives that he had saved and that he should be released from the prison. He actually petitioned to the president at the time, Andrew Johnson, saying that his dedication and care inspired courage in a hopeless situation and that Dr. Samuel Mudd had risked his own life to save many others. He wrote that it was a debt that they could never repay, but they thought that he should be released from prison. And then 299 other officers signed his petition.

The petition also included two of the other men who had been sentenced there for conspiring to kill Abraham Lincoln, as it stated they had nothing to do with his death. When they got sentenced, he actually got sentenced with three other people who were found guilty and one of them died of yellow fever. So at the end of that, the petition included the two that had survived and the doctor. On February 8, 1869, less than a month before President Johnson would leave office, he signed the petition and gave a pardon for all three of them. And on March 11, 1869, they were all released from dry tortugas. Wow, and they just could go back to their lives? Mm-hmm, which I have mixed feelings about because I feel like, yes, he absolutely saved a lot of people and that's great.

I'm not totally convinced that he didn't have some sort of plot, at least to kidnap the president. Like, I think that there was a reason that John felt comfortable going to his house with a broken leg after killing the president. and I feel like it was probably because he had some idea of the plot to kidnap him or something. You know, like I just feel like there was something going on there. That's a very valid point. And I'm sure, well, I don't know if you have any information on this or not, but I could imagine that he didn't just get released and could go back home in his life was what it was before. I'm sure he got a lot of backlash from his community and things like that.

I would think, I don't know. Like, do you have any information on that? I don't really know what his life was like directly after that. I do know that he is thought of now as a hero pretty much in Dry Tortugas. And that is because his grandson fought a lot to get his record expunged from actually being convicted. If you go to Dry Tortugas National Park, there's a lot of history about him there and they talk about him a lot. and he is kind of thought of as more of like a hero in this aspect and less of his involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. But then there's also people who are like, no, he definitely had a role in this and he got let out because he saved all these people.

So it's kind of debated on who he was as a person and if he actually did or did not help John in what he did. Right. Well, I mean, he is human or was human. and everyone does a mixture of good and bad things. And he definitely, at least in this story, the way you told it did, he did great things by saving a lot of lives and also did horrible things by being a part of a conspiracy to kill the president or abduct the president or whatever. So, I mean, he did good and bad things. And his legacy, at least on Dry Tortugas, is positive. Definitely. Wow, I never knew any of that.

And it's so interesting. History has really been a new subject for me that I'm, diving headfirst into like even researching the story I just kept finding more and more information that I'm like how did I never know this? Well to be honest I don't I don't even remember learning that John Wilkes Booth died in the way that he did yeah and I mean maybe my memory just sucks from history class but my memory of John Wilkes Booth is he assassinated the president and then he died and that's that's it but there is I guess only so much you can tell a fifth greater. Like, I don't think they would- That's true.

Dive into this. So I guess now we get to relearn it in a more in-depth way, which is great. And I really hope that everyone enjoyed it as much as I did because I certainly learned something tonight. And that was really cool. Who would have thought that an island off of Florida, a national park, no less, would have such a strong tie in connection to one of the most prominent and tragic parts of United States history. Thank you so much. We've had quite the story day today. We've done a couple. We've recorded two stories today. This is our second one. So we've been busy today for sure. Thank you all for joining us. If you want to see more of what we post on Instagram. We like to post photos and updates and things like that. You can follow us on Instagram National Park After Dark. We also have a Twitter and PAD podcast. If you want to tweet to us, we have a Facebook National Park After Dark. And we always love to hear from you guys. So if you want to rate, review, subscribe to us. We appreciate it. We like to hear from you. And then we also have Patreon. If you don't, if you have finished all our stories and you want to hear more, go on to our Patreon, which you can find on our Instagram, on our link on there. And also at our website and padd podcast.com. All right. Well, catch us on Patreon if you want more. If you're already a Patreon member,

thank you. Sorry, you got all that we have to give so far. And we will see you next week in meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye, everyone. Bye. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit Progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential

savings will vary.