prison on March 8, 1869, and returned to his home in Maryland on March 20, 1869. On March 2, 1869, three weeks after he pardoned Mudd, Johnson also pardoned Spangler and Arnold. When Mudd returned home, well-wishing friends and strangers, as well as inquiring newspaper reporters, besieged him. Mudd was very reluctant to talk to the press because he felt it had misquoted him in the past. He gave one interview to the New York Herald after his release but immediately regretted it, and complained that the article had several factual errors and misrepresented his work during the yellow fever epidemic. On the whole, though, Mudd continued to enjoy the support of his friends and neighbors. He resumed his medical practice and slowly brought the family farm back to productivity. In 1873, Spangler traveled to the Mudd farm, where Mudd and his wife welcomed him. Spangler lived with the Mudd family for about 18 months, earning his keep by doing carpentry, gardening, and other farm chores, until Spangler's death on February 7, 1875. Mudd always had an interest in politics. In prison, he learned about political happenings by reading the newspapers that were sent to him. After his release, he again became active in community affairs. In 1874, he was elected chief officer of the local farmers association, the Bryantown Grange. In 1876, he was elected Vice President of the local Democratic Tilden-Hendricks presidential election committee. Tilden lost that year to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in a hotly-disputed election. The next year, Mudd ran as a Democratic candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates, but was defeated by the popular Republican William Mitchell. Mudd's ninth child, Mary Eleanor "Nettie" Mudd, was born in 1878. In 1880, the Port Tobacco Times reported that Mudd's barn which contained almost 8000 lb. of tobacco, two horses, a wagon, and farm implements was destroyed by fire. Death Mudd was just 49 years old when he died of pneumonia, on January 10, 1883, and was buried in the cemetery at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Bryantown, the same church in which he once met Booth. Rehabilitation attempts The degree of Samuel Mudd's culpability has remained controversial. Some claim that Mudd was innocent of any wrongdoing, including Mudd's grandson Richard Mudd, and that he had merely been imprisoned for treating a man who came to his house late at night with a fractured leg. Over a