THE BLUE, THE GRAY, AND THE YELLOW

The Fiend in Gray: Washingtonians hit with biological weapons; Mass fear and civilian casualties in New York; Plots for launching toxic chemicals in the air; The strange saga of Civil War terrorism (Jane Singer, June 1, 2003, The Washington Post)

Both sides in the Civil War contemplated acts beyond traditional warfare, according to legal documents, court testimony, historical records, books and newspaper accounts of the day. Artillery shells filled with chlorine for use on the battlefield were proposed by New York schoolteacher John Doughty early in the war. Lincoln refused to consider such chemical weapons, viewing them as being outside the laws of war. Sure that the Confederacy would rapidly overpower its enemies, President Jefferson Davis initially shied away from such measures as well.

But as the internecine conflict lengthened from months to years, and the casualties mounted from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands, the South's desperation spawned a largely untold story: a series of terrorist plots against Washington and New York that eerily foreshadowed September 11, 2001, and its aftermath.

Hatched by politicians, rogue scientists, saboteurs and foot soldiers fanatically loyal to the Confederacy, the plans included spreading yellow fever to Washington and the White House; burning New York City to the ground; poisoning New York's water supply; and attacking Northern ports with a newly developed chemical weapon. There was even a scheme in the war's waning days to blow up the White House, though Lincoln refused to take it seriously. "I cannot bring myself," he said when told of the threat, "to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm."

While most of the plots failed, their intent was clear. Then as now, they were designed to kill, terrify and demoralize civilians.

"It is a matter of no importance whether the acts proposed to be done . . . accord with the usages and principles of modern civilized warfare," Williamson Simpson Oldham, a senator in the Confederate Congress, wrote in an unpublished memoir after the war. In 1865, he had urged Davis to unleash a chemical weapon developed by a former Columbia University chemistry professor, Richard Sears McCulloh.

"I have seen enough" of Professor McCulloh's weapon, Oldham wrote to Davis, "to satisfy me that we . . . can devastate the country of the enemy and fill its people with terror and consternation."

Many of the plots against Washington and New York were dreamed up in Canada, a haven for Confederate agents throughout the Civil War. In fancy hotels, over good cigars and better brandy, they considered -- and embraced -- all kinds of acts of terrorism.

Their schemes took on even greater urgency after a one-legged colonel named Ulric Dahlgren led a Union cavalry force on a mission to take Richmond, the Confederate capital, in the winter of 1864. When Dahlgren was ambushed and killed just outside the city, papers found on his body included detailed instructions for the assassination of Davis and his cabinet. The failed raid jolted Richmond, increasing its resolve to use whatever means necessary to destroy the North. Increasingly, Confederate funds flowed north to plotters in Toronto.

Luke Blackburn, a well-born Kentuckian and dyed-in-the-bones Rebel, had already made his way to Canada. At one time, according to a biography of Blackburn by Kentucky historian Nancy Disher Baird, he'd lobbied Confederate leaders to make him "General Inspector of Hospitals and camps . . . willing to take this position without pay or rank." When that suggestion was ignored, he volunteered to aid the supply ships defying the Northern blockades of Southern ports.

In his forties, Blackburn, too old to fight and too fired up not to, became Mississippi's agent in Toronto. It was there that he hit on his plan to inflict a yellow fever epidemic on the North.

One of the great unknowns of history is whether the future of the South, particularly of its blacks, might not have been helped by systematic reprisals after the War, which a number of successful terror attacks would have nearly guaranteed. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 22, 2003 9:34 PM