Born in Trenton, Maine, Blunt had a colorful early career. He served as a seaman and then earned a medical degree in Ohio where he practiced medicine before migrating to the Kansas frontier. He continued his practice and became known as one of the most ardent abolitionist leaders of "bleeding Kansas," assisting John Brown in helping escaped slaves to reach Canada. During the first year of the Civil War, Blunt commanded a cavalry regiment in Brigadier General James H. Lane's Kansas Brigade, which was not mustered into Federal service until April 8, 1862.

Appointed as Commander of the Department of Kansas, he then defeated Colonel Douglas H. Cooper's Indian troops at Old Fort Wayne, Indian Territory in October , 1862. In November, 1862, he was promoted to Major General and later led the 1st Division of the Army of The Frontier in the capture of Van Buren, Arkansas and to victories at Cane Hill and Prairie Grove. Blunt served as commander of the District of the Frontier from June to October, 1863.

On October 6, as he was transferring his headquarters from Fort Scott to Fort Smith, a band of Quantrill's guerrillas attacked the wagon train, massacring ninety of his Federal soldiers, most of them black. Subsequently dismissed from command, he was kept in the army because of his popularity and was reassigned by President Lincoln to recruit blacks along the frontier.

Blunt was restored to the field when Confederate Major General Sterling Price led his final desperate raid to recapture Missouri during September and October, 1864, and was one of the Federal generals whose troops repulsed him in more than a score of bloody engagements, at last driving Price out of Missouri permanently. In the final year of the war, Blunt commanded the District of Upper Arkansas and the District of South Kansas.

Returning to civilian life in July of 1865, Blunt settled in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he resumed practicing medicine. Four years later, he moved to Washington, D.C. He worked first as a claims agent and then in a government hospital for the insane. He died in Washington in 1881.

Also:

The Not as Famous: Gen. Merriwether Jeff Thompson

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