Samuel Arnold

Being unemployed and bored, Arnold eagerly accepted the plan. On the night of Wednesday, March 15, 1865, Arnold met with Booth and other conspirators at Gautier's Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue to discuss the possible abduction of the president. Two days later Arnold was involved in a plan to kidnap Lincoln on the road to the Campbell Hospital. There the president had planned to attend a performance of the play Still Waters Run Deep. Lincoln changed plans at the last minute, and this plan fell through. (It is likely John Surratt embellished the story of this kidnapping attempt in his 1870 lecture. In reality Lincoln remained in Washington to speak to the 140th Indiana Regiment from the balcony of the National Hotel.) After this failure, Arnold returned to Baltimore but ended up taking a clerk's job in Old Point Comfort, Virginia. On March 27, he wrote Booth a letter requesting that Booth desist from his plans and indicating, at least temporarily, he (Arnold) would be separating himself from Booth's gang.

Arnold was working at this job in Virginia when he was arrested on April 17, 1865. He admitted his part in the plot to kidnap Lincoln. However, his co-workers supported Arnold's contention that he was in Virginia at the time of the assassination. Still, the U.S. Government charged him with conspiracy, and he went to trial along with Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Edman 'Ned' Spangler, Dr. Samuel Mudd, and Michael O'Laughlen.

Arnold was found guilty by the Military Commission and sentenced to life. With Mudd, Spangler, and O'Laughlen, he was sent to Ft. Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.

On September 21, 1906, Samuel Arnold died of pulmonary tuberculosis (at the time called “galloping consumption”). Arnold was 72 years old when he passed away. He had undergone surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital but died two days later. Arnold was buried in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore. John Wilkes Booth and Michael O'Laughlen were also buried in the same cemetery.