Smallpox in Virginia

reports of smallpox in the time of the American Revolution
Source: University of Georgia, Pox Americana

George Washington was infected with smallpox in 1751 when he was 19 years old and visiting his brother Lawrence on Barbados. He recovered, and ever afterwards was immune.

When he took command of the Continental Army outside Boston in July, 1775, he prohibited the soldiers from getting inoculated against smallpox. During the five weeks of recovery, soldiers would be too incapacitated to fight if the British attacked. Smallpox raged within the civilian population of Boston in 1775, after soldiers sent from Europe brought the disease. Washington prohibited refugees from the city from coming to his military encampments, fearing an epidemic would break out among the soldiers.

After the British evacuated Boston in March 1776, Washington sent 1,000 soldiers who had immunity to the occupy the city first.

In the winter of 1775-1776, troops sent by the Continental Congress to capture Quebec in Canada were devastated by a smallpox epidemic. Benedict Arnold had to abandon eforts to capture the city before British reinforcements arrived. Throughout 1776, Washington struggled to recruit and retain troops. Men were willing to fight as soldiers in his army, but feared that joining it would be followed by disease and death.¹

On February 5, 1777, Washington notified the Continental Congress that all recruits had to be innoculated. He issued a directive on February 6 saying:²

Finding the Small pox to be spreading much and fearing that no precaution can prevent it from running through the whole of our Army, I have determined that the troops shall be inoculated. This Expedient may be attended with some inconveniences and some disadvantages, but yet I trust in its consequences will have the most happy effects. Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army in the natural way and rage with its usual virulence we should have more to dread from it than from the Sword of the Enemy.

Under these circumstances I have directed Doctr Bond to prepare immediately for inoculating in this Quarter,1 keeping the matter as secret as possible, and request that you will without delay inoculate All the Continental Troops that are in philadelphia and those that shall come in as fast as they arrive. You will spare no pains to carry them through the disorder with the utmost expedition, and to have them cleansed from the infection when recovered, that they may proceed to Camp with as little injury as possible to the Country through which they pass.

If the business is immediately begun and favoured with the common success, I would fain hope they will be soon fit for duty, and that in a short space of time we shall have an Army not subject to this the greatest of all calamities that can befall it when taken in the natural way.

starting in 1777, George Washington required the Continental Army to be innoculated
Source: Library of Congress, To all brave, healthy, able bodied, and well disposed young men in this neighbourhood...

British forces marched through Virginia in 1781. On their way to establishing a base at Yorktown, the Marquis de Lafayette and General "Mad Anthony" Wayne threated the rear of the British Army near Jamestown.

According to an American officer, the British sought to delay the Americans by forcing them to bypass people with smallpox infections:³

At dark took up our line of march in order to overtake Col. Simes's horse, who had the rear guard with a great number of cattle, plundering as he was making his way towards James Town; [the British] left one negro man with the small-pox lying on the road side in order to prevent the Virginia militia from pursuing them , which the enemy frequently did ; left numbers in that condition starving and helpless, begging of us as we passed them for God's sake to kill them, as they were in great pain and misery.

Links

• KFF News
• Epidemic: "Eradicating Smallpox"
• University of Georgia
• Pox Americana

References