The Confederate Dirty War by Jane Singer

[Jane Singer]

What has always seemed supremely ironic to me is that yellow fever could not be spread by the infected clothing given/sold/donated to anyone. In 1900, Walter Reed found that the yellow fever was virus transmitted via a mosquito. Ironic, right? Blackburn's plot would have failed in any case. But what unnerved me when researching the plot was that here was a doctor who'd sworn to "do no harm," intending to do great harm. That to me is the horror of a fanatical sensibility, then as now. And he later became the governor of Kentucky!

As for the shirts, if they were visibly stained, and if the valise ever got to President Lincoln, my guess is that it and its contents would have been dumped or donated after being laundered.