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 (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