by Jim Murphy
His National Gazette was also short on fever news. It avoided publishing most obituaries, never mentioned the rise in crime, and was vague about the spread of the disease. For real news, people turned to Andrew Brown’s Federal Gazette, the only daily that operated without interruption throughout the crisis.
Even so, Freneau did have an impact. He poked fun at those who fled the city, at the power of opium to banish pain, and at the cruelty and indifference of those outside the city. His weapons of choice were brief dialogues and verse. The construction of his verse was often clumsy, possibly because strict deadlines meant he had to work so quickly.
He did manage to catch a vivid sense of the plague in one memorable poem called “Pestilence.”
Hot dry winds forever blowing,
Dead men to the grave-yards going:
Constant hearses,
Funeral verses;
Oh! What plagues—there is no knowing!
Priests retreating from their pulpits!—
Some in hot, and some in cold fits
In bad temper,
Off they scamper,
Leaving us—unhappy culprits!
Doctors raving and disputing,
Death’s pale army still recruiting—
What a pother
One with t’other!
Some a-writing, some a-shooting.
Nature’s poisons here collected,
Water, earth, and air infected—
O, what pity,
Such a City,
Was in such a place erected!
Humor might relieve the tension, but only for a few minutes. In time, the reader would look up and see the deserted streets, hear some nearby cry for help. The horror was all around and not likely to go away soon.
During this sad, helpless time, another bit of verse appeared outside Woodstown, New Jersey. Major Christian Piercy had fled Philadelphia after his son and an apprentice caught the fever, bribing a stagecoach driver to take him and his family to south Jersey.
Piercy grew ill on the ride out of Camden, and the other passengers—including those from his household—put him out of the coach at Isaac Eldridge’s farm. Eldridge would not allow the sick man in his house, but he did let Piercy stay in an abandoned log cabin in the woods. There Piercy died and was buried without ceremony where he had fallen. Later his family had a headstone put in place that bore this warning verse:
Stay Passenger see where I lie
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so You shall be
Prepare for Death and follow me.
From Mathew Carey’s list of the dead, 1794. (THE LIBRARY COMPANY OF PHILADELPHIA)
CHAPTER NINE
“A Delicate Situation”
It gives great pleasure to the Editor to hear, from every quarter of our City, that universal health prevails in a degree equal to any former period.
—THE FEDERAL GAZETTE, NOVEMBER 1, 1793
Monday, October 28. George Washington had been impatient since his departure from Philadelphia in early September. When he left the stricken city, he had put Secretary of War Henry Knox in charge of the government, giving the former general clear instructions to report to him weekly concerning the spread of yellow fever. But after a few days’ close contact with the pestilence, Knox found that his warrior instinct had abandoned him. He closed up his house and lied across New Jersey to Manhattan Island.
Knox was turned away from Manhattan and wound up in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, where he spent two weeks in quarantine. He did write to Washington, telling the president that the militia was out all over New Jersey hunting for fever victims, and that Manhattan was in a state of panic over the possibility that the fever would visit there. But he provided no useful information about the fever in Philadelphia.
Washington’s own efforts to find out what was going on did not produce satisfying results, either, especially for a man who wanted to be kept informed about all matters. “I would thank you for precise information on this head, for I have not been able to get any,” he wrote to the comptroller of the treasury, Oliver Wolcott.
Wolcott was one of only three high-ranking officials of the federal government within a day’s ride of Philadelphia, Attorney General Edmund Randolph and Postmaster General Timothy Pickering being the others. But these men were struggling to keep their departments functioning and had little spare time to gather information or write reports, even for the leader of the country.
The few pieces of information the president did obtain were often second- or thirdhand and usually vague in nature. “The accounts we receive here,” he lamented, “are so opposite and unsatisfactory that we know not on what to rely.” It was, Washington complained, “a delicate situation for the President to be placed in.”
Adding to his frustration was the fact that very few official papers had made their way to him at Mount Vernon. Washington was a stickler for orderly files that he could search at a moment’s notice. This was the most important way he kept himself informed about the hundreds of things happening in the fledgling nation. Unfortunately, when the government clerks had panicked and dashed from Philadelphia, they had abandoned all papers and records in boarded-up houses. No one knew where these documents were; and no one was willing to risk his or her life wandering through the infected city in search of them.
Washington did his best to answer questions and make decisions, but he often found his efforts blocked. At one point Thomas Sim Lee, the governor of Maryland, wanted to know what he should do with the British ship Roehampton, which had been seized by one of Genêt’s hired privateers and brought into Baltimore Harbor. The British were upset over the seizure, and wanted their ship back, while the French were upset that the ship was being detained until the president could decide what to do.
A very embarrassed George Washington finally had to confess to Lee, “I brought no public papers of any sort (not even the rules which have been established in these cases,) along with me; consequently am not prepared at this place to decide points which may require a reference to papers not within my reach.”
To make matters worse for Washington, the question about whether he could legally call Congress into session outside Philadelphia was still very much up in the air. He had sought advice on the issue from a number of cabinet members and government officials, but no agreement had been reached.
Alexander Hamilton felt the president could indeed move Congress. After all, Hamilton reasoned, the government would not automatically cease functioning if an enemy army captured the capital. Why wouldn’t the same principle apply in the case of a devastating natural disaster, such as a plague?
But Thomas Jefferson and James Madison disagreed and could not be budged from their position. During the formation of the federal government, they argued, individual states had been extremely wary about giving away too much of their governing power to any future president. Their nervousness was the result of British history.
English kings had allowed their subjects to participate in making laws through representatives in Parliament. This system of government worked as long as the king was not challenged on important matters. Whenever the Parliament clashed with their monarch, the king would get his way by suddenly convening Parliament in a remote, unreachable part of the country. Without a proper quorum of members, the king could then decide law as he pleased.
As a result, representatives in the United States had drawn up the Constitution with particular attention to the issue of where they would meet in the future. As far as Jefferson and Madison were concerned, only Congress could relocate itself, and it could do this only after it officially convened in Philadelphia.
Finally, Washington turned to Attorney General Edmund Randolph. As the nation’s chief law official and legal counsel of the United States, Randolph was someone whose opinion held great weight. In a delicately worded letter, Randolph told Washington that no, the president could not move Congress, even in an emergency. “It seems to be unconstitutional,” Randolph
noted. If the federal government was to continue to operate, then Congress would have to meet in Philadelphia, whether or not the deadly fever was still present.
Toward the end of October, Washington heard from Postmaster General Pickering that the fever seemed to be on the wane. A cold spell had swept in and with it a cleansing rain. Burials were falling in number, from a high of 120 on October 11 to half that number on October 21.
This good news was followed almost immediately by a contradictory report from Comptroller Wolcott. After several good days in the city, he explained, warm weather reappeared and deaths increased, jumping to 82 on October 22. Wolcott advised the president to delay his return trip several more days.
Clearly, the city was not yet safe.
This didn’t please the anxious president, who had already been out of touch with critically important matters for over six weeks. He could write back and ask again what was happening in the city, but this would take an unbearable amount of time. Before the fever, a letter could travel by fast post from his home to the city and a reply be received in three to six days. Now letters to and from Philadelphia had to undergo special processing, such as being dipped in vinegar and allowed to dry. It was taking mail anywhere from ten days to two weeks to make the journey these days! Further delay was out of the question.
George and Martha Washington, along with two young relatives and a servant, at Mount Vernon in Virginia. (THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA)
On October 28, Washington climbed aboard a coach and headed north, accompanied by Tobias Lear and a valet. The president described his five-day trip in one simple, businesslike sentence: “Set out from Mount Vernon the 28 October & arrived at Germantown the 1st, of Novemr.”
Thomas Jefferson was also returning to the Philadelphia area to complete his time as secretary of state. He joined up with Washington in Baltimore. Unlike the president, Jefferson had a great deal to say about his journey—about the heat, rain, dust, and expense. Because no coaches were running north of Baltimore, the president and his secretary of state were forced to hire—at their own expense, Jefferson grumped—a carriage to take them to Germantown. All along the way Jefferson chafed at the jump in prices brought about by “harpies who prey upon travelers” returning to Philadelphia. Inns on the route had upped their rates; ferrymen were charging extra to transport people and carriages across rivers. In the end, Jefferson estimated that it cost him nearly eighty dollars just to get to Germantown.
His annoyance continued even after he reached his destination. The seven inns around the village were still jammed with folk who had left Philadelphia, and the few larger houses in the area were already filled with guests. By prior arrangement Washington went to stay at the elegant and comfortable home of David Deshler. Jefferson, on the other hand, had to beg the proprietor of the King of Prussia Tavern for a place to sleep. Even then he did not get a furnished room. “We must give from 4 to 6 to 8 dollars a week,” he complained, “for [a closet] without a bed . . . a chair or table.”
Jefferson did well to find a private space, as cramped and bare as it was. Two congressmen and future presidents, James Madison and James Monroe, would arrive after him and be compelled to sleep on wooden benches in the tavern’s public room!
What Washington and the others discovered was that, despite the surge in deaths on October 22, the fever did indeed seem to be losing strength. Deaths fell to below thirty on Saturday, October 26. Dr. Benjamin Rush looked about his neighborhood that day and found that there was not a single person ill on his block. “The disease visibly and universally declines,” he wrote to Julia, his confidence returning.
Elizabeth Drinker opened her front door to find “a delightful, cool, frosty morning,” adding, “’Tis generally agreed that the fever is very much abated.”
The committee, meanwhile, noted a lessening in demands for their assistance and passed a resolution saying: “It [has] pleased Divine Providence to favor us with an agreeable prospect of returning health to our long afflicted city.” The fever wasn’t completely gone, the committee was quick to confess, but it would be safe for “our fugitive brethren” to return in a week to ten days.
People who had hidden themselves indoors began to emerge and walk the streets again. Shop doors opened for business, and ships once again sailed upriver to discharge cargo; farmers arrived, their wagons loaded with provisions bound for the markets of a very hungry city. Plans were even announced for the resumption of the stagecoach in early November. The city seemed to be awakening after a long, inescapable nightmare. Andrew Brown, the editor of The Federal Gazette, devoted an optimistic paragraph to the “dawn of returning health and order.”
Most doctors had predicted the fever would end when the cold weather returned. Almost all epidemics followed the same pattern, striking during warm weather, disappearing with the first hard frost. Daniel Defoe, in recording the end of the Black Death that visited London in 1665, wrote that “the winter weather came on apace [and] most of those that had fallen sick recovered, and the health of the city began to return.”
The same was true for Philadelphia in 1793. The number of deaths would go above twenty only twice after October 27. Those who had escaped the city began to trickle back home. “Every hour,” Mathew Carey observed with relief, “long-absent and welcome faces appear.” Those returning found their city a changed place. The streets were remarkably clean, for one thing. The trash and garbage had been swept away; dead animals—cats, dogs, birds, and pigs—had been removed. Gone, too, were the beggars and homeless children.
Most changed of all were those who had been left behind. The survivors were exhausted and haggard looking, their clothes frayed and soiled and smelling heavily of vinegar and camphor. The skin of many who had gotten the fever retained a sickly yellow glow. Those who had taken the mercury purge were constantly spitting to rid their mouths of the foul taste the drug left behind. When they smiled, their teeth were stained an unsightly black.
Governor Mifflin’s proclamation (along with other news and ads), as it appeared in the November 14 edition of The Federal Gazette, (THE LIBRARY COMPANY OF PHILADELPHIA)
These reminders of the yellow fever did not shake the spirit of optimism that gripped the city. Rayner Taylor announced that he would be printing “an anthem suitable to the present occasion.” Thomas Boylston Adams, son of Vice President John Adams, wrote to his nervous parents in Quincy, Massachusetts, “The idea of danger is dissipated in a moment when we perceive thousands walking in perfect security about their customary business, & no ill consequences ensuing from it.” On the very last day of October, a huge white flag was hoisted at Bush Hill that proclaimed: NO MORE SICK PERSONS HERE.
The fever was gone, folk around town declared happily.
And then, even in defiance of the cold weather and a dusting of snow, several of the recently returned residents developed symptoms of the disease. A silversmith known only as Mr. Brooks reopened his shop on October 31 and was dead of yellow fever on November 3. Others fell ill as well. While these new incidences of yellow fever were few and scattered, they demonstrated clearly that the disease had not been completely wiped out. It still lurked in dark, unclean corners, still clung to dirty sheets and curtains.
Once again the carts carried the sick to Bush Hill, and the white flag of victory had to be hauled down. The committee issued a public warning, telling recent arrivals to clean their homes thoroughly, burn gunpowder to purify the air, dump lime down their privies, and whitewash every room.
A typical day along Arch Street at the close of the eighteenth century. (THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA)
The reemergence of the deadly disease did not stop people from returning to the city. It did, however, leave a lingering sense of helplessness. Well into December, individuals were still succumbing to the fever, and Thomas Jefferson was worrying over which houses were safe to enter. “Yellow fever,” he predicted, “will discourage the growth of great cities in the nation.”
One of t
he last diary entries Elizabeth Drinker made concerning the plague spoke of the unshakable unease the invisible killer had left in its wake. “M. D. observed, while at her sister’s this afternoon, a Coffin, a cart, and 10 or 12 persons walking on ye pavement as attendants, ’Tis to be feared that ye Yellow Fever is not entirely over.”
On Sunday morning, November 10, George Washington mounted his horse and rode out of Germantown without bothering to wake his aides. Tired of not knowing the true condition of Philadelphia and frustrated by the general nervousness of everyone around him, Washington took it upon himself to make an inspection.
Down the five miles Washington traveled, through forests and past scattered farmhouses and fields, over the small bridge covering Pegg Run, until he entered the city. He spent the next while riding up one street and down another, nodding politely to the few people he happened to encounter at that early hour. The air smelled fine; the streets were clean and orderly. Aside from the tiny red flags stuck on houses, there was no outward sign of the fever anywhere.
He rode back to Germantown later that day to tell his shocked staff where he’d been. Best of all, he informed them, the nation’s capital was healthy enough for Congress to meet there in December, as planned.
The city filled up again and took on its normal, preplague pace. The markets bustled with activity; the taverns and coffeehouses buzzed with conversation; the federal, state, and local governments took up the business they had left off in September.