BERMUDA'S role in one of the first ever "biological terrorism" campaigns ever conceived was chronicled by an American Civil War historian in The Washington Post this week.

Civil War authority Jane Singer detailed Dr. Luke Pryor Blackburn's failed attempt to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and unleash a yellow fever epidemic on Washington, DC using infected blankets and clothing from Bermudian yellow fever victims.

His plan did not succeed because yellow fever is only spread through the Aedes aegypti mosquito, a fact not known at the time.

Ms Singer is an historian, civil war expert and short fiction writer. Her Washington Post Magazine article on June 1 is particularly poignant after the World Trade Centre bombing in 2001, and the continuing possibility of a bioterrorism attack from Iraq.

In a telephone interview with the Mid-Ocean News yesterday, she said because of the increased interest in bioterrorism she had decided that now was the best time to finish up four years of research and get her book on sabotage and the Civil War published.

Although many people think bioterrorism is a relatively recent military development, Ms Singer wrote in the Washington Post that during the Civil War, both the Union and the Confederacy contemplated acts that went well beyond what is understood by conventional warfare.

"Had yellow fever not been spread solely by the mosquito there would have been massive epidemics of it," Ms Singer told the Mid-Ocean News. "What tantalised me about this story was that 19th- century medical misinformation was the only reason it failed. It wasn't determined until 1900, by Walter Reed, that yellow fever was viral in nature and could only be passed by mosquitos."

She said this event was significant because it was the only bioterrorism plot conceived of and carried out by Confederate operatives stationed in Canada. Dr. Blackburn was Mississippi's commercial and diplomatic agent in Toronto.

"Canada was a haven for spies and saboteurs at the time," she said. "There were Confederate terrorist cells in Canada, because it was very easy to slip over the border into the Union states from Canada than it was from the Confederate states.

"I'm not sure if there was an active terrorist cell operating in Bermuda throughout the US Civil War, but from what I understand there was a great deal of sympathy for the Confederacy in St. George's.

"St. George's was populated by Confederate sympathisers and operatives."

It is no surprise that Bermuda would play a part in such operations as it was a strategic point during the Civil War.

Judy Perry, museum guide at the the Bermuda National Trust Museum at Globe House in St. George's, explained Bermuda's vital role in the Civil War: "In Bermuda they would load supplies onto the little blockade runner ships. Those would go from Bermuda to North Carolina and sometimes other Confederate ports being blockaded by Union ships."

Ms Perry said the blockade runners would pick up the cotton and ship it back to Britain.

"Britain didn't have any other supplier of cotton at that time other than the Confederate states, so they were desperate," she said. "People were out of work in Britain due to the lack of the cotton; that is why they were frantic to get it."

Ms Singer said at one point Britain was considering joining the American South and going to war against the Union because of the impact of the Northern blockade on the British economy.

Describing how Dr. Blackurn used Bermuda to carry out his acts of terrorism, Ms Singer wrote in the Washington Post: "By the spring of 1864, yellow fever was taking hundreds of lives in Bermuda.

"Blackburn set off for the island, promising his Confederate associates that the trip would yield 'an infallible plan directed against the masses of Northern people solely to create death'."

While in Bermuda Dr. Blackburn's seeming attentiveness to local yellow fever patients earned him a Good Samaritan award from Queen Victoria.

In fact, he was busy gathering up yellow fever victims' blankets and clothing that he thought carried the deadly disease.

"When he returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Blackburn was carrying trunks that he believed were filled with disease," wrote Ms Singer. "One trunk he fondly called 'Big Number Two' would kill a man at 60 yards, once it had been opened, the doctor boasted.

"Blackburn handed the trunks over to his operative, Godfrey Joseph Hyams, an impoverished Englishman who had lived in the American South for nine years. For a promised fee of $100,000, Hyams had agreed to smuggle the trunks into Washington and other cities along the Eastern Seaboard. A special valise packed with fancy dress shirts and infected rags was to be delivered to President Lincoln."

Mistakenly confident that his yellow fever plot was all taken care of, Dr. Blackburn went to Canada to work on the best method of unleashing arsenic and strychnine into the New York water supply.

According to Ms Singer, in September of 1864, Blackburn returned to Bermuda again to repeat his earlier attempt. A Bermudian hotelier named Edward Swan helped him to store the trunks of dirty blankets.

"This time, however, Blackburn's activities came to the attention of Charles M. Allen, the American consul in Bermuda," wrote Ms Singer. "Suspicious that Blackburn did not ask for any compensation for his expenses or services and alarmed that Blackburn 'never neglected to advertise on all possible occasion the cause of the Rebels', Allen wondered what the great healer was really about."

Ms Singer said it wasn't until Blackburn returned to Canada that Godfrey Hyams, who had never received the promised fortune, ratted on him.

"On April 14, the day Lincoln was assassinated, a Confederate agent appeared at Allen's office in Bermuda and repeated many of the allegations made by Hyams," wrote Ms Singer. "A bombshell discovery followed. Three infected trunks were still in Bermuda in the keep of Edward Swan. They were quarantined immediately, and according to Allen's agents contained 'dirty flannel drawers and shirts . . . evidently taken from a sickbed . . . some poultices and other things which could have been placed there for no legitimate purpose'."

Dr. Blackburn was arrested in Montreal, Canada on May 25, 1865. He was dubbed "yellow fever fiend" by the New York Times. Dr. Blackburn was not extradited to the United States to stand trial for murder. Instead, he was charged with violating Canada's Neutrality Act and acquitted.

In 1873, Dr. Blackburn returned to the South and was welcomed as a hero by many. He was eventually elected Governor of Kentucky. He died in 1887 and on his tombstone are the words "The Good Samaritan."

Ms Singer told the Mid-Ocean News: "If Dr. Blackburn had not been drawn into or enlivened by his Confederate zealotry he probably would have remained a great healer. Ironically, not only did he survive his trial and the terrible accusations made about him, but he went on to become the Governor of Kentucky. It is a story not only about what he did in Bermuda but how he was able to go back into polite society and become a primary leader."

She said it was also curious how Dr. Blackburn thought that the blankets and clothing were deadly toxic, but did not worry about contracting the disease himself.

"The family destroyed a lot of papers," she said. "We in this field of history are left with court testimony and secondary sources. There is not much in Blackburn's own words to explain what he was trying to do. I believe it is conceivable he might have dreamed himself immune or he was just resigned to getting it. There is no record that he ever got it."

Ms Singer has not been to Bermuda, but she has been in contact with a Bermudian student, Sabina Bean, who has helped her search for material on yellow fever outbreaks.