SOLD!!!

A wonderful CDV of Fort Jefferson, Florida from the water.  Written on the top of the CDV is "Fort Jefferson Florida".  Writeen on the back of the image is"The 110th Regt stationed in this Fort more than two years.  After Lincoln was assassinated the conspirators were sent there, they were released after the war.".  The fort was started in the 1840's and is today the least visited national park!  It was one of if not the largest masonary forts built to protect the U.S. from naval invasion.

 

The fort remained in Federal hands throughout the Civil War. With the end of hostilities in 1865, the fort's population declined to 1,013, consisting of 486 soldiers or civilians and 527 prisoners. The great majority of prisoners at Fort Jefferson were Army privates whose most common transgression was desertion while most civilian prisoners transgressed by robbery. However, in July 1865 four special civilian prisoners arrived. These were Dr. Samuel Mudd, Edmund Spangler, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen, who had been convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Construction of Fort Jefferson was still under way when Dr. Mudd and his fellow prisoners arrived, and continued throughout the time they were imprisoned there and for several years thereafter, but was never completely finished. Mudd provided much-praised medical care during a yellow fever epidemic at the fort in 1867, and was eventually pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released. By 1888, the military usefulness of Fort Jefferson had waned, and the cost of maintaining the fort due to the effects of frequent hurricanes and the corrosive and debilitating tropical climate could no longer be justified. In 1888, the Army turned the fort over to the Marine Hospital Service to be operated as a quarantine station.