Samuel Arnold

Samuel Bland Arnold (September 6, 1834 – September 21, 1906) was an American Confederate sympathizer involved in a plot to kidnap U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. He had joined the Confederate Army shortly after the start of the Civil War but was discharged due to health reasons in 1864. Early life Samuel Arnold was born in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., on September 6, 1834. He was the son of Mary Jane and George Arnold, Sr. and had an older brother. The family later moved to Baltimore where Arnold attended St. Timothy's Hall, a military academy – where he and John Wilkes Booth were schoolmates. Role in Lincoln kidnapping conspiracy After his discharge, Arnold returned to Baltimore and in the late summer of 1864, he was recruited by Booth to be part of the kidnap plot. Bored and unemployed, Arnold accepted. On March 15, 1865, the conspirators met at Gautier's Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue to discuss the plot. Arnold and the other alleged conspirators, John Wilkes Booth, David Herold, Lewis Powell, Michael O'Laughlen, and John Surratt, were to kidnap Lincoln, ferry him through Van Ness Mansion owned by Thomas Greene, and hold him to exchange for the Confederate prisoners in Washington D.C. This was attempted twice but failed because Lincoln was not where they thought he would be. After the failure, Arnold took a clerk's job in Old Point Comfort, Virginia.