Luke P. Blackburn
Luke Pryor Blackburn was an American physician, philanthropist, and politician from Kentucky. He was elected the 28th governor of Kentucky, serving from 1879 to 1883.
After earning a medical degree at Transylvania University, Blackburn moved to Natchez, Mississippi, and gained national fame for implementing the first successful quarantine against yellow fever in the Mississippi River valley in 1848. He came to be regarded as an expert on yellow fever and often worked pro bono to combat outbreaks. Among his philanthropic ventures was the construction of a hospital for Mississippi River boatmen using his personal funds. He later successfully lobbied Congress to construct a series of similar hospitals along the Mississippi.
In the early days of the American Civil War, he acted as a civilian agent for the governments of Kentucky and Mississippi. By 1863, he was aiding Confederate blockade runners in Canada. In 1864, he traveled to Bermuda to help combat a yellow fever outbreak that threatened Confederate blockade running operations there. Shortly after the war's end, a Confederate double agent accused him of having carried out a plot to start a yellow fever epidemic in the Northern United States that would have hampered the Union war effort. The evidence against Blackburn was considerable, although much of it was either circumstantial or provided by witnesses of questionable reputation. Although he was acquitted by a Toronto court, public sentiment was decidedly against him throughout much of the United States. Historians still disagree as to the strength of the evidence supporting Blackburn's role in the alleged plot.
Blackburn remained in Canada to avoid prosecution by U.S. authorities, but he returned to his home country in 1868 to help combat a yellow fever outbreak along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. He rehabilitated his public image by rendering aid in yellow fever outbreaks in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1873, Fernandina, Florida, in 1877, and Hickman, Kentucky, in 1878. Dubbed the "Hero of Hickman", Blackburn's ministrations propelled him to the Democratic gubernatorial nomination the following year. In the general election, he defeated Republican Walter Evans by a wide margin. As governor, Blackburn won passage of several reforms in the areas of state finance and internal improvements, but his signature accomplishments were in the area of penal reform. Troubled by the conditions at the penitentiary in Frankfort, Blackburn attempted to ease overcrowding through liberal use of his gubernatorial pardon, earning him the derisive nickname "Lenient Luke". He also secured approval of the construction of a new penitentiary at Eddyville, the adoption of a warden system to replace the corrupt private oversight of the old penitentiary, and the implementation of the state's first parole system. Although his record of reform led historians to laud him as "the father of prison reform in Kentucky", his liberal pardon record and expenditure of scarce taxpayer money to improve the living conditions of prisoners was unpopular at the time, and he was booed and shouted down at his own party's nominating convention in 1883. After his term as governor, he returned to his medical practice and died in 1887. The Blackburn Correctional Complex, a minimum-security penal facility near Lexington, Kentucky, was named in his honor in 1972.
Early life and family
Luke Blackburn was born June 16, 1816, in Woodford County, Kentucky. He was the fourth of thirteen children born to Edward M. and Lavinia Blackburn. Blackburn's great-uncle, Gideon Blackburn, was a well-known Presbyterian missionary and served as president of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Many of Blackburn's relatives were involved in politics. His maternal grandfather was a delegate to the 1799 Kentucky Constitutional Convention and his uncle, William Blackburn, was President Pro Tempore of the Kentucky Senate and acting lieutenant governor in the administration of Governor James Turner Morehead. Noted statesman Henry Clay was also a distant cousin, and occasionally visited the Blackburn home.Blackburn obtained his early education in the local public schools. At age sixteen, he began a medical apprenticeship under his uncle, physician Churchill Blackburn. During his apprenticeship, he aided his uncle in treating victims of cholera outbreaks in Lexington and Paris. He later matriculated to Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he earned a medical degree in March 1835. After graduation, he opened a medical practice in Lexington and was instrumental in combating a cholera epidemic in nearby Versailles. He accepted no payment for his services during the epidemic.
On November 24, 1835, Blackburn married his distant cousin, Ella Gist Boswell. Boswell's father, Dr. Joseph Boswell, had died in the Lexington cholera epidemic a year earlier. The couple's only child, son Cary Bell Blackburn, was born in 1837. Just before Cary's birth, Blackburn invested heavily in the hemp rope and bagging industry and suffered a significant financial loss when the business venture subsequently failed. In 1843, Blackburn was elected as a Whig to the Kentucky House of Representatives and served a single, undistinguished term. He did not seek re-election, and in 1844, he and his younger brother opened a medical practice in Frankfort, Kentucky.
Drawn by the city's prosperous economy, the Blackburns relocated to Natchez, Mississippi, in 1847. Luke Blackburn quickly became an active member of the community, helping found a temperance society, joining a militia group, and becoming the administrator of a local hospital. He became a close associate of Jefferson Davis and William Johnson. In 1848, Blackburn served as the city's health officer and implemented the first successful quarantine against a yellow fever outbreak in the Mississippi River valley. Using his own personal funds, he established a hospital for boatmen who navigated the Mississippi River. He also successfully lobbied the Congress to establish a hospital in Natchez; upon its completion in 1852, he was appointed surgeon there. In 1854, he implemented another successful quarantine against yellow fever. The Mississippi Legislature commissioned Blackburn to lobby the Louisiana State Legislature to establish a quarantine at New Orleans to protect cities along the Mississippi River; Louisiana authorized him to organize such a system.
Blackburn and his son Cary traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in September 1854 to secure an apprenticeship for Cary under noted physician Samuel D. Gross. While they were there, a yellow fever outbreak hit Fort Washington near Long Island, New York. The mayor of New York City asked Blackburn to help treat victims of the outbreak; Blackburn accepted the invitation and refused compensation for his services. When he returned home in November 1856, he found his wife Ella, who suffered from dropsy and a nervous condition, ailing with a fever. Despite Blackburn's efforts to save her, Ella Blackburn's condition worsened and she died before the end of the month. Blackburn was stricken with grief, and friends encouraged him to tour Europe, as he had often spoken of doing, to ease his sorrow. He did so in early 1857, visiting hospitals in England, Scotland, France, and Germany. While in Paris, Blackburn met fellow Kentuckian Julia M. Churchill, who was traveling with her sister and niece. Blackburn and Churchill cut their journeys short, returned home, and were married in November 1857. After their honeymoon, the couple took up residence in New Orleans in January 1858, and Blackburn resumed his medical practice. A brief poem written by Blackburn indicates that the couple had a daughter named Abby, but the child apparently died as an infant, and her birth and death dates are unknown.
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 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.