Biographical Profile of Pvt. Charles Mudd, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Charlie Mudd sipped milk and nibbled chicken as he recovered from measles at a military hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, during the fourth summer of the war. He periodically received medicine ordered by the doctor assigned to his case. The twenty-five-year-old formerly enslaved private, who had labored in his enslaver’s fields about sixty-five miles away in Washington County, joined the newly formed 108th U.S. Colored Infantry without his enslaver’s consent in June 1864.⁴¹⁵

Charles Mudd was one of three brothers who served in black regiments.⁴¹⁶ Less than a month after Mudd enlisted, he fell ill while on duty in Louisville, as measles swept through the regiment. Mudd’s illness might have been avoided. About a year earlier, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman proposed one way to reduce disease in rookie regiments. He suggested that inexperienced recruits be distributed among veteran regiments instead of being lumped together in new organizations. By doing so, Sherman explained, they “would learn from the sergeants and corporals and privates the art of taking care of themselves, which would actually save their lives and preserve their health against the host of diseases that invariably attack the regiments.”⁴¹⁷ Authorities did not act on Sherman’s suggestion. The army’s medical corps did make substantial improvements that contributed to the health and welfare of the troops. None of these changes prevented Mudd from getting sick. He recovered after two weeks in the hospital and rejoined his company. He spent the next twenty months at locations in Kentucky and Mississippi and guarding Confederate prisoners of war at Rock Island, Illinois. He served as a corporal for most of his enlistment but was reduced to the ranks for an undisclosed reason before he mustered out of the army in March 1866. He returned to Washington County and became a farmer in Springfield. He married Harriet McIntire in 1867. She died in 1872, possibly from complications of childbirth. She left Mudd widowed with a three-year-old son. Mudd married Rose Howard later that year, and they lived together until his death from influenza in 1915 at about age seventy-four.⁴¹⁸