Luke P. Blackburn - Civil War

Civil War

Blackburn's sympathies lay with the Confederacy at the outbreak of the Civil War. Too old to enlist in the Confederate Army, he acted as an envoy for Kentucky governor Beriah Magoffin to obtain weapons from Louisiana for the defense of Kentucky, but he failed to secure the arms. In early 1862, he was assigned to the staff of Major General Sterling Price as a surgeon. Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus appointed him as one of two commissioners to oversee the care of the state's wounded soldiers in February 1863. After securing sufficient medical supplies for the wounded, Blackburn traveled to Richmond, Virginia, to meet with Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon and offered to serve as General Inspector of Hospitals and Camps without taking compensation or a rank. When the offer was refused, Governor Pettus asked Blackburn to travel to Canada to collect provisions for blockade runners there. Blackburn and his wife left Mississippi for Halifax, Nova Scotia, in August 1863, then continued on to Toronto (in what was then the Province of Canada) where they lodged in a boardinghouse. On one occasion, Blackburn was aboard a blockade running ship carrying ice from Halifax to Mobile, Alabama, when the ship was captured by the Union Navy. Union officials assumed Blackburn was a civilian passenger on the vessel and released him, after which he returned to Canada.

A devastating outbreak of yellow fever struck the island of Bermuda in April 1864. The island was a major base of operations for Confederate blockade runners, and the epidemic threatened their continued operations there. At the request of Charles Monck, the Governor General of the United Provinces of Canada, Blackburn traveled to Bermuda to aid soldiers and civilians there. Blackburn continued his ministrations until mid-July when he briefly returned to Halifax. The epidemic on the island continued, and Blackburn returned there in September to continue aiding the victims. He remained there until the outbreak abated in mid-October. For his efforts in Bermuda, Blackburn received 100 British pounds and a commendation from Queen Victoria. Although little is known of his actions in Canada for the remainder of the war, he was rumored to have been part of a plot to incite massive insurrections in New England as a diversion, allowing fellow Confederate agent Thomas Hines to lead a prison break at Camp Douglas in Chicago. When word of the plot was leaked to Union officials, they sent troops to reinforce Boston, Massachusetts, Blackburn's rumored target, quashing his role in the operation.