America's first plague : the deadly 1793 epidemic that crippled a young nation / Robert P. Watson.
Material type: TextPublisher: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, [2023]Description: xxxi, 277 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781538164884
- 1538164884
Item type | Home library | Collection | Shelving location | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Dr. James Carlson Library | NonFiction | 614.541 W341 | Available | 33111011067242 | |||||
Adult Book | Main Library | NonFiction | New | 614.541 W341 | Available | 33111011292188 | ||||
Adult Book | Northport Library | NonFiction | 614.541 W341 | Available | 33111009477627 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
As disease spread, the national government was slow to react. Soon, citizens donned protective masks and the authorities ordered quarantines. The streets emptied. Doubters questioned the science and disobeyed. The year: 1793. The place: young America from Baltimore to Boston but especially in Philadelphia, the nation's largest city and seat of the federal government. For 3 long months yellow fever, carried by mosquitoes let loose from a ship from Africa, ravaged the eastern seaboard The federal government abandoned the city and scattered, leaving a dangerous leadership gap. By the end of the pandemic, ten percent of Philadelphians had died.
America's First Plague offers the definitive telling of this long-forgotten crisis, capturing the wave of fear that swept across the fledgling republic, and the numerous unintended but far-reaching consequences it would have on the development of the United States and the Atlantic slave trade. It is an intriguing tale of fear and human nature, a tragic lesson of how prejudice toward blacks was so easily stoked, an examination of the primitive state of medicine and vulnerability to disease in the eighteenth century, and a story of the struggle to govern in the face of crisis. With eerie similarities to the Covid pandemic, historian Robert P. Watson tells the story of a young nation teetering on the brink of chaos.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Part I. America's First Crisis -- Plague! -- Revolution -- Yellow Jack -- Philadelphia -- The First to Die -- Part II. The Capital Under Seige -- "Hell Town" -- Fear and Panic -- Philadelphia Responds -- Bush Hill -- The Physicians War -- Part III. Turning Point -- Unlikely Heroes -- A Nation without a Government -- Ghost Town -- The Fall Frost -- Of Pestilence and Politics -- Epilogue: 100 Days of Terror.
"In 1793, the interim capital city of Philadelphia was struck by a mysterious malady that ended up killing at least one-tenth of the population, prompting an evacuation, and shutting down the nascent federal government, resulting in shocking parallels to recent pandemics and offering important political lessons"-- Provided by publisher.