“No prisoner has ever successfully escaped from Fort Jefferson. No one will ever escape. It is more than two-hundred kilometers across open ocean to the nearest occupied land.”

FAITH LAPIDUS: Four of the prisoners who arrived that long ago day had been found guilty of taking part in the successful plot to murder the president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.

One of the prisoners was sentenced for giving medical aid to the man who killed President Lincoln. He was also found guilty of being an active member of the plot. That man was Samuel Mudd. He was a thirty-two year old doctor from the eastern state of Maryland. He had been sentenced to spend the rest of his life doing hard labor at Fort Jefferson.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: The huge red brick building that faced Doctor Mudd and the other prisoners had six sides. It took up most of the land area of the small island. The six wide walls surrounded a large area of open space in the center.

Each wall was about fifteen meters tall. Inside the walls were hundreds of rooms. Most of them held huge guns that pointed out to sea. Many other buildings were also inside the huge fort. Soldiers slept in them. Some of the houses were used by the officers.

Soldiers and prisoners worked and lived within the walls of the fort. The extreme heat affected them all.

Hundreds of sea birds flew over the small island. Doctor Mudd must have believed that those birds would be the only creatures that would ever escape from Fort Jefferson. He must have believed that far away island would be his new home for a very long time. But he was wrong.