improved living conditions for prisoners. Nicknamed “Lenient Luke,” Blackburn issued more than a thousand pardons and was literally booed off the political stage at the end of his term for being too compassionate. That was Luke Blackburn, the humanitarian. Then there’s Luke Blackburn, the terrorist. During the Civil War, Blackburn was the Confederate sympathizer who gathered up contaminated bedsheets and garments from yellow-fever victims in Bermuda and tried using them to spread an epidemic throughout Northern cities. He failed solely because the disease is not, as he’d assumed, contagious
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