Confederate soldier in the 1st Rockbridge Artillery in the Civil War; later a Presbyterian minister in Rockbridge County, Virginia, and a high school principal. Papers include four letters, written July 5 and September 18, 1864, from camp near Petersburg, Virginia, to his future wife. Writes about the chaplaincy in the CSA Army, sitting with a dying man in his last hours, the freedom he had before the war, and news from the front in Mobile, Alabama. Refers to the shelling of Petersburg and the Democratic Party Chicago Convention. Also includes a post-war diary (1868-70) written by Blain as a newly ordained Presbyterian minister. Writes of Confederate officers in and around Lexington, Virginia, including Robert E. Lee; his travels around the county, church business, the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, and the stillborn birth of his son.