Blood on the Moon

by Edward , Jr. Steers

  The Confederate leaders weren’t buying the Union denials. They knew the papers were genuine. The Richmond Examiner wrote an editorial that concluded that the contest between the two enemies had now become a “war under the Black Flag.”29 Lincoln’s knowledge of the raid and his approval of it seem likely. Since General Meade had not approved of Kilpatrick’s plan, but acquiesced to it, control was placed either within the War Department with Stanton or in the White House with Lincoln. In reality, both men had to know and had to have approved of the raid’s objectives. Charges that the documents were forged soon surfaced, but neither Meade nor other officers in his command believed the documents were anything but genuine.30

  The war was taking a sharp turn away from established principles of moral conduct. As the third year was drawing to a close, the Confederacy looked more favorably on strategies it may have once viewed as extreme and unacceptable. One month after the Union plot to sack Richmond and kill Jefferson Davis, another diabolical plot began to unfold, this one by the Confederacy under the guise of humanitarian benevolence. This time, evidence has come to light that places knowledge of the plan squarely on Jefferson Davis’s desk. Its perpetrator was a Kentucky physician who had made his way to Canada as one of Jefferson Davis’s agents. His name was Luke Pryor Blackburn, and he was widely recognized as an international authority on yellow fever and praised for his humanitarian efforts to quell several epidemics that had ravaged Southern coastal cities.

  In the spring of 1864, Jefferson Davis established a group of agents in Canada whose purpose was to disrupt the war effort throughout the North and bring about Lincoln’s defeat in the upcoming election. Davis selected Jacob Thompson and Clement C. Clay as his special commissioners to oversee the operation. The two men proceeded to Canada carrying drafts for one million dollars in gold31 and a letter from President Jefferson Davis that read in part, “I hereby direct you to proceed at once to Canada, there to carry out such instructions as you have received from me verbally, in such manner as shall seem most likely to be conducive to the furtherance of the interests of the Confederate States of America which have been entrusted to you.”32

  It was Thompson’s and Clay’s charge to wreak as much havoc throughout the Northern states as they could, using a variety of resources. Joining Thompson and Clay were several prominent men from the Confederacy. Among these men was Dr. Blackburn, who decided he could better serve the Confederacy by using his medical knowledge against her enemies than by using it to help ease the suffering of her soldiers.

  Born on June 16, 1816, in Woodford County, Kentucky, Luke Blackburn received all of the advantages of an upper-class family. He was educated in the best schools of Kentucky, graduating from Transylvania University with a medical degree in 1834 at the young age of eighteen. His medical interests soon centered on yellow fever and its etiology. During a yellow fever outbreak in Natchez, Mississippi, he instituted a rigid quarantine that was thought to have blunted the epidemic and saved the city from hundreds of deaths. In Louisiana he again performed great service during a yellow fever epidemic instituting another quarantine. By the outbreak of the Civil War he was among the leading authorities on the treatment of yellow fever.

  Early in the war Blackburn received an appointment to the staff of Confederate General Sterling Price as his civilian aide-de-camp. In early 1863 he left Price’s staff and was appointed by the governor of Mississippi as one of two commissioners to oversee the care of Mississippi’s invalid soldiers. In August of 1863, Blackburn became a temporary blockade runner successfully carrying a shipment of ice from Halifax through the Union blockade at Mobile only to have the ship captured on its return to open sea. Mistaken by Union officials for a civilian passenger, Blackburn was released. He made his way back to Canada where he began to hatch a diabolical scheme to introduce biological warfare in the form of yellow fever into the Confederacy’s arsenal of weapons against the North.

  Although the cause and spread of yellow fever was misunderstood in the 1860s, the perception that it was highly infectious and easily spread among the population was widely accepted as fact. The belief that the disease was infectious led Blackburn to undertake a plan designed to infect selected populations in the Northern states as well as Union troops stationed in the coastal towns of Norfolk, Virginia, and New Bern, North Carolina. Added to Blackburn’s targets was Abraham Lincoln. While history has treated Blackburn’s yellow fever plot against civilian populations with skepticism, it was not only real, but one that was known at the highest levels of the Confederate government. The plan involved collecting and distributing clothing taken from victims who had died from yellow fever. The distribution included targeting civilian populations.

  At the trial of the Lincoln conspirators in May of 1865, the question of introducing yellow fever into the North for the purpose of mass killing became an early focus of the prosecution. The government began its case by attempting to show that leaders of the Confederacy, including Jefferson Davis, were capable of diabolical schemes against civilians including arson and the spreading of disease. It was a short step from these sorts of atrocities to the murder of Abraham Lincoln.

  While part of the testimony of the government’s key witnesses against Jefferson Davis proved to be perjured testimony, not all of it was tainted or false. On Monday, May 29, a man by the name of Godfrey Joseph Hyams took the witness stand. Hyams was an inconspicuous sort of person. He was slight of build, had a dark complexion, and was afflicted with crossed eyes. He gave the appearance of being frail and weak. The press made a point of describing his features as “Israelitish” and pointed out to its readers that he was “of the Jewish persuasion.”33 What Hyams lacked in appearance, however, he made up for in his bite.

  Hyams began by telling the court of a monstrous plot on the part of Confederate leaders to institute biological warfare against large segments of the Northern population. Hyams described how he was enlisted by one of Jefferson Davis’s Canadian agents to distribute clothing believed to be infected with yellow fever into certain cities in the North. The object was to start an epidemic of the deadly disease that would prove devastating to Northern war efforts. It was, as Hyams put it, “directed against the masses of northern people solely to create death.” Hyams’s testimony named names and gave dates detailing the plot.34 Despite his convincing testimony, Hyams has been lumped together with the other perjured witnesses, and his story has been characterized as another example of purchased testimony or simply ignored in all but two accounts of the assassination story.35 He has been described as “an inglorious turncoat whose loyalties responded to money rather than a cause.”36

  Despite attacks against his character and truthfulness, Hyams’s testimony accusing the Confederacy of a form of biological warfare does not stand alone, but is supported by numerous documents that lie scattered among historical archives and the testimony of at least eight different witnesses who tied Luke Blackburn and several other agents directly to a plot to induce deadly epidemics among civilian populations. Among those giving testimony confirming the plot were two important and high-ranking Confederate officials. Much of this material has been overlooked or considered too circumstantial to prove the case against Blackburn or give any credence to Jefferson Davis’s direct knowledge of such a plot. But even without Hyams’s damaging testimony, the case against Blackburn and his cohorts, including Davis, is compelling.

  Blackburn’s plot was initiated in April 1864 when a major yellow fever epidemic hit the Island of Bermuda with devastating force. Among the potential casualties of the epidemic was the Confederacy’s blockade-running organization that used Bermuda as a major base of operations. The Confederates operated a wharf and office on the island under the command of Major N.S. Walker of the Confederacy’s commissary department.37

  While the epidemic raged, Blackburn left Halifax in Nova Scotia and arrived in Bermuda where he offered his medical skills to the Bermuda government. Welcomed by government officials, Blackburn set about his diabolic plan by
carefully collecting the clothing and bedding of victims who had died from yellow fever. Packing the items into eight large trunks, Blackburn had them shipped back to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before leaving for Bermuda in April, Blackburn had hired Godfrey Hyams to take charge of the trunks and safely import them into the United States. Blackburn’s plan was for Hyams to take the trunks to Washington, Norfolk, and New Bern, where he would arrange for the clothing to be sold at auction, thereby gaining the widest possible distribution. As the clothing was spread amongst the civilian population, so would the deadly yellow fever, or so Blackburn believed. Included among Blackburn’s targets was Abraham Lincoln.

  A small black valise accompanying the trunks contained several expensive dress shirts that Blackburn had previously packed with the yellow fever clothing. Blackburn instructed Hyams to take the valise, along with a letter, to President Lincoln as a special gift by an anonymous benefactor. Blackburn believed that even if Lincoln did not choose to wear the shirts their mere presence would infect him with the deadly disease. Hyams, apparently afraid of the risk of taking such a “gift” to the White House, declined. The trunks were another matter, however, and Hyams would see to their transport.

  Hyams carried out his assignment using the alias of J.W. Harris, shipping five of the trunks through Boston to Washington where he contracted with the auction house of W.L. Wall and Company to dispose of the infected clothing. Because Norfolk and New Bern were within the military lines of the Union army, Hyams had to contract the services of an army sutler to dispose of the infected clothing in those two cities.

  Completing his task, Hyams returned to Canada where he reported back to Blackburn. Blackburn had promised Hyams he would pay him substantially for his work, but had yet to give Hyams any money other than a nominal sum to help carry out his grisly mission. Hyams had used that money to bribe the ship’s captain to transport the trunks and the customs officers to allow the trunks to enter the United States.

  Because Blackburn was scheduled to leave the next day for a return trip to Bermuda, he turned Hyams over to Jacob Thompson, telling Hyams that Thompson would see to his payment. Thompson agreed to pay Hyams $100 as a partial advance but only after Hyams secured a receipt from Wall showing that he had actually contracted for the sale of the clothing.

  His initial effort at spreading disease accomplished, Blackburn returned to Bermuda on July 15 and again offered his services to the Bermuda government. Welcomed again, Blackburn set about securing another supply of infected clothing, this time filling three trunks with what he supposed was deadly contagion. He then contracted with a hotel keeper by the name of Edward Swan at St. Georges, Bermuda, to hold the trunks until the spring of 1865 and then ship them to New York, where they would be sold to unsuspecting New Yorkers in the same manner that they had been sold in Washington, Norfolk, and New Bern.

  Blackburn’s plot was exposed in April of 1865, however, when Hyams, disgruntled at not being paid for his work, walked into the United States consul’s office in Toronto and offered to blow the whistle on several other of the Confederacy’s clandestine operations. Hyams wanted both remuneration and a pardon for his valuable information. If the Confederates wouldn’t pay, maybe the Yankees would.

  After revealing the details of a Confederate plan to disrupt U.S. fishing off the Canadian coast, and the location of a Confederate “bomb house” in Toronto, both of which proved accurate, Hyams demands were met. On April 12, Hyams gave a detailed statement to U.S. officials about the Confederate yellow fever plot. Two days later, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Suddenly Hyams became an important witness for the U.S. government in their effort to directly place the blame for Lincoln’s murder at the feet of Jefferson Davis and his Canadian agents. The yellow fever plot together with Hyams’s claim that a valise of infected clothing was designated for Lincoln, pointed an accusing finger at Jefferson Davis. The government called Hyams to Washington, where he testified at the conspiracy trial of those accused of Lincoln’s murder, giving the details of Blackburn’s plot.

  While the trial was taking place in Washington, authorities in Bermuda had independently received information about Blackburn’s second inventory of trunks being held by Edward Swan on St. Georges Island. According to newspaper accounts in Bermuda, officials had been tipped off by a Confederate agent working in Major N.S. Walker’s operation. Bermuda officials seized the trunks and charged Swan with violating Bermuda’s health regulations. A hearing and trial subsequently held resulted in further exposure of Blackburn’s plan to unleash yellow fever in the United States.

  The proceedings in Bermuda, which coincided with Godfrey Hyams’s allegations, persuaded Canadian authorities to act. On May 19 Blackburn was arrested in Montreal and placed on $4,000 bail.38 Following a preliminary hearing he was charged with violating Canada’s neutrality act and ordered held over for trial. Canada’s chief witness was Godfrey Hyams. Hyams told of his recruitment by Blackburn and of his receiving the trunks in Halifax and of his taking the trunks through Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to Washington. Hyams also told of Blackburn’s repeated promises of money that never fully materialized, but that he eventually received $100 directly from Jacob Thompson. This payment of $100 by Thompson would eventually link Jefferson Davis with Blackburn’s plot to wage germ warfare against the North.

  During Blackburn’s Canadian trial the prosecution dropped a bombshell into the proceedings when it introduced a deposition from William W. Geary, Jacob Thompson’s personal secretary and one of Jefferson Davis’s key agents in Montreal. In his deposition, Cleary admitted knowing Blackburn and Hyams, having “met them on several occasions in Canada.”39 Cleary told the court that Blackburn had told him “that he had him [Hyams] employed to distribute ... clothing which he had prepared, I think he said at Bermuda, infected with the yellow fever.”40 Cleary, however, claimed that Thompson had not given any money to finance Hyams, thereby keeping Thompson and his superiors clear of any direct involvement in the plot. Cleary’s deposition left the impression that neither he nor Thompson, nor the leaders in Richmond, had anything to do with Blackburn’s scheme. The Confederate commissioners and their superiors had clean hands. Blackburn was acting on his own.

  The evidence against Blackburn, although circumstantial, was considerable. Those who were skeptical of Hyams’s testimony could not ignore Geary’s deposition. The pro-Confederate Montreal Gazette, which initially had come to Blackburn’s defense, had to admit at the end of the trial that the testimony of Hyams was true. The May 27 edition reported, “Mr. Cleary is a man of different character [from Godfrey Hyams], and we see no reason to question his deposition…. In the affidavit of Mr. Cleary,… we have for the first time,… reliable evidence to connect Dr. Blackburn with this affair…. It corroborates Hyams; ... Dr. Blackburn must be held guilty of having attempted to damage the Federal cause by introducing yellow fever among the Federals by means of infected clothing. Such an act cannot be held to belong to civilized war. It is an outrage against humanity.”41

  The Canadian press reacted harshly toward Blackburn and those connected with the plot. The New York Times, which covered the story closely, reminded people that New Bern had been targeted by Blackburn the previous summer and had suffered one of the worst yellow fever epidemics in its history. A New Bern newspaper commented on Blackburn’s plot after learning that their city had been targeted: “This hideous and long studied plan to deliberately murder innocent men, women and children, who had never wronged him in any manner, is regarded here as an act of cruelty without a parallel—a crime which can only be estimated and punished in the presence of his victims in another world.”42

  It mattered little that the New Bern epidemic, which killed two thousand people, was not caused by Blackburn’s contaminated clothing shipped there in the summer of 1864. To Blackburn’s thinking, the plot was successful, and his shipment of “yellow fever poison” worked, except it had killed many more civilians than Yankee soldiers.

  Despite th
e evidence and the overwhelming public sentiment against Blackburn, he was acquitted of violating Canada’s neutrality act on the grounds there was no proof that any of the trunks had ever been on Canadian soil and, therefore, did not violate its neutrality. The trunks had been carefully restricted to Halifax, and the Toronto court trying Blackburn concluded that it lacked jurisdiction in Nova Scotia.

  In Washington, the trial of Abraham Lincoln’s assassins began with an attempt by government prosecutors to link Jefferson Davis and his agents in Canada with organizing the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. Luke Blackburn was one of several links to the Confederacy and Jefferson Davis. The government issued orders for Blackburn’s arrest but was unsuccessful in extraditing him during the conspirator’s trial. When the government prosecutors failed to provide evidence that Davis had approved or even knew about Blackburn’s diabolical plot they dropped interest in extraditing him to the United States. Meanwhile, the government shifted its attention to the eight defendants in the dock. The United States authorities soon forgot about Blackburn, and he faded away.

  Had the U.S. government been more diligent it might have found the evidence it sought to confirm Blackburn’s activities and show Jefferson Davis’s knowledge, and therefore sanction, of the yellow fever plot. The evidence lay among the papers of Jefferson Davis that the government was in the process of collecting among the scattered archives in Richmond. Among these papers was a letter of damaging content by an Episcopal minister turned Confederate agent named Kensey Johns Stewart.

  The Reverend Stewart served the Confederacy in a variety of capacities during the first three years of the war. In April 1861 Stewart was officiating at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia. On February 9, 1862, while Stewart was conducting Sunday services, a Union officer seated in the congregation demanded that a special prayer for the president of the United States should be read. When Stewart refused to comply, he was arrested and taken into custody. After a brief detainment, Stewart was released and fled to Richmond where he received an appointment as chaplain in the Sixth North Carolina Infantry. In late 1862 he was reassigned as chaplain for Union prisoners confined in Richmond hospitals. In March of 1863, Stewart traveled to England where he spent a year putting together a special edition of the Episcopal Prayer Book for the Confederacy in conjunction with the Reverend Robert Gatewood, who later became head of the Confederate army’s intelligence office.43 Stewart returned to Richmond in 1864 and, after a visit with Jefferson Davis, traveled to Canada where he became one of Davis’s agents. In a letter to Secretary of War John A. Seddon dated October 25, 1864, Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin wrote: