The Contagion of Liberty by Andrew M. Wehrman

Author:Andrew M. Wehrman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

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THIRTEEN SCARS

George Washington’s order to inoculate the Continental army had vast implications beyond the military, as the battle against smallpox opened up a new front of the war, affecting men, women, and children as well as soldiers across the thirteen colonies. Health was foremost on the mind of John Walker, a neighbor and friend of Thomas Jefferson’s, in the difficult summer of 1780. Walker was serving as a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, and Jefferson was then the governor of Virginia. Before discussing the news that General Horatio Gates was taking over in the Southern Department after the disastrous fall of Charleston to the British, Walker inquired about the health of Jefferson’s family before sharing his own news. Walker had brought his family to Philadelphia and, like many of members of Congress, had needed to be inoculated on arrival. He reported that his family was “perfectly recovered” from the procedure. His wife, Elizabeth, amazingly experienced “only two pustules,” and their teenaged daughter, Milly, had a more patriotic number of blemishes: “one for each of the United States.”1 Even if most Americans did not refer to their pock marks as battle scars, most knew that they could not win the war without them. Overcoming the dreaded disease was broadly understood to be a collective struggle and a crucial obstacle to be overcome as the war for independence stretched across the thirteen states before the victory at Yorktown in 1781.

For tens of thousands of civilians across the new United States, Washington’s order seemed to confirm that their government — whether local, state, or national — should protect public health by providing broad access to inoculation. Although the order was initially given in secret in February 1777, and technically affected only the Continental army, its impact was massive from New Hampshire to Georgia. Within months, Americans learned that General Washington supported public inoculations. The overturning of Connecticut’s inoculation ban was the most dramatic reversal, but across the new country and amid a war for independence, Americans had made their priorities clear by demanding momentous changes in public health. Now these priorities aligned with the commander and chief of the Continental army and with Congress. Military officials, state and local governments, and private doctors worked together and separately to implement the policy. Inoculating the Continental army and all its new recruits required the cooperation of soldiers, their families, and civilian governments. Many communities further organized to protect themselves. Some conducted general inoculations of whole populations as in Boston, and others focused on safety, price controls, and other measures to guarantee access for soldiers and civilians alike. These efforts were uneven across the colonies, especially in the South. Washington did not pressure southern governors to build inoculation hospitals as he had in the North. The ubiquity of slavery made many southerners more hesitant to inoculate, more hostile to broad inoculation efforts, and even angrier at the British, whom they blamed for purposely spreading the disease to both freed and enslaved Black populations of the South.

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