The crucible of disease: Trauma, memory, and national reconciliation during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878

Journal of Southern History

Volumn 69, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 791-819

  Blum, Edward J ^a  

^a BAYLOR UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949570466     PISSN: 00224642     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/30040097     Document Type: Article

References (130)

1. Abram J. Ryan, Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous (12th ed.; Baltimore, 1892), 328-29 (first and second quotations) and 63-64 (third quotation)
2. For more on Ryan see Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913 (New York and Oxford, 1987), 36-37
3. and Charles C. Boldrick, "Father Abram J. Ryan, 'The Poet-Priest of the Confederacy,'" Filson Club History Quarterly, 46 (July 1972), 201-18. The author would like to thank Tracy Campbell, Kathi Kern, Mark Summers, Joanne Pope Melish, Joanne Meyerowitz, Ellen Furlough, Sarah Hardin, and the anonymous referees for the Journal of Southern History for their insightful and extremely helpful comments on an earlier version of this article
4. Ryan, Poems, 78-80
5. David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2001)
6. Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens, 1980)
7. Thomas L. Connelly and Barbara L. Bellows, God and General Longstreet: The Lost Cause and the Southern Mind (Baton Rouge and London, 1982)
8. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy
9. For other works that discuss sectional reconciliation see Paul H. Buck, The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 (Boston, 1937)
10. C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge, 1951), esp. chap. 2
11. Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill and London, 1993)
12. Stuart McConnell, Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill and London, 1992)
13. and Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York, 1991), esp. 93-296
14. Silber, Romance of Reunion, 5-6, 25-26, 52-54, 125-41, 152-58
15. William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879 (Baton Rouge and London, 1979), 115-16, 192-96, 239-78
16. Stanley P. Hirshson, Farewell to the Bloody Shirt: Northern Republicans and the Southern Negro, 1877-1893 (Bloomington, 1962)
17. Rayford W. Logan, The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901 (New York, 1954)
18. and Edward J. Blum, "Gilded Crosses: Postbellum Revivalism and the Reforging of American Nationalism," Journal of Presbyterian History, 79 (Winter 2001), 277-92
19. Some primary evidence tentatively suggests that whites systematically neglected the medical needs of African Americans during the outbreak. Several northern white missionaries in the South asserted that local blacks were denied relief. See "A Memphis Letter," American Missionary, 32 (November 1878), 332
20. Although possibly accurate, such claims are difficult to substantiate and are generally outside the scope of this study. Further research on the experiences of African Americans during the outbreak is sorely needed. For more on African Americans during the epidemic see Dennis C. Rousey, "Yellow Fever and Black Policemen in Memphis: A Post-Reconstruction Anomaly," Journal of Southern History, 51 (August 1985), 357-74
21. For two studies that examine intersections of medical epidemics and race during the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia see J. H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 (Philadelphia, 1949), 94-101, 253-54
22. and Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840 (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1988), 121-25
23. For the most part, studies of the fever have focused on its importance with regard to medical issues and federal health legislation. See John H. Ellis, Yellow Fever and Public Health in the New South (Lexington, 1992)
24. Khaled J. Bloom, The Mississippi Valley's Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 (Baton Rouge and London, 1993)
25. Margaret Humphreys, Yellow Fever and the South (New Brunswick, N.J., 1992)
26. and Gerald M. Capers Jr., "Yellow Fever in Memphis in the 1870's," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 24 (March 1938), 483-502
27. Craig C. Piers, "Remembering Trauma: A Characterological Perspective," in Linda M. Williams and Victoria L. Banyard, eds., Trauma and Memory (Thousand Oaks, Calif., London, and New Delhi, 1999), 61
28. Paul Antze and Michael Lambek, eds., Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory (New York and London, 1996), vii
29. Judge J. F. Simmons, The Welded Link, and Other Poems (Philadelphia, 1881), 24
30. Sidney Andrews, The South Since the War: As Shown By Fourteen Weeks of Travel and Observation in Georgia and the Carolinas (Boston, 1866), 40 (quotation), 292-300
31. For hostilities see also Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour, May 1, 1865, to May 1, 1866 (Cincinnati, 1866)
32. and J. T. Trowbridge, The South: A Tour of Its Battle-fields and Ruined Cities, A Journey through the Desolated States, and Talks with the People (Hartford, Conn., 1866)
33. Quoted in James M. McPherson, "Grant or Greeley? The Abolitionist Dilemma in the Election of 1872," American Historical Review, 71 (October 1965), 51
34. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York and other cities, 1988), 521-34
35. Buck, Road to Reunion, 134-36
36. "Topics of the Time," Scribner's Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine for the People, 10 (August 1875), 510
37. For more on the election and immediate aftermath of the 1876 presidential election see C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (Boston, 1951)
38. and Keith Ian Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 1973)
39. Quoted in Woodward, Origins of the New South, 48
40. Ellis, Yellow Fever and Public Health, 39-59 (quotation on p. 53)
41. Bloom, Mississippi Valley's Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878
42. For further descriptions of symptoms see J. M. Keating, A History of the Yellow Fever. The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878, in Memphis, Tenn. (Memphis, 1879), 306
43. and Jo Ann Carrigan, "Yellow Fever: Scourge of the South," in Todd L. Savitt and James Harvey Young, eds., Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South (Knoxville, 1988), 58
44. "Agonizing Appeals," Washington Post, August 31, 1878, p. 1
45. Report of the Orleans Central Relief Committee (New Orleans, 1879), 81
46. "The Southern Scourge," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 47 (September 14, 1878), 18 (first quotation)
47. "The Public Health," North American Review, 127 (November-December 1878), 444
48. For estimates of the financial loss see Rutherford B. Hayes, "Second Annual Message," in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (10 vols.; New York, 1897-1903), VII, 492
49. For treasury expenditures see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789-1945: A Supplement to the Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1949), 300
50. A Chapter in the History of the Epidemic of 1878 from Private Memoranda (Holly Springs, Miss., 1879), 4 (first quotation)
51. quoted in Deanne Love Stephens Nuwer, "The 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Mississippi" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern Mississippi, 1996), 101 (second quotation)
52. Keating, History of the Yellow Fever, 109 (quotation)
53. "News of the Week," New York Independent, August 29, 1878, p. 9
54. "The Scourge of the South," New York Times, August 5, 1878, p. 1
55. Larry A. Bohn, "'An Oasis in a Desert of Woe': The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 in Jackson, Madison County, Tennessee," West Tennessee Historical Society Papers, 50 (December 1996), 105-14, esp. 106-8
56. "The Awful Epidemic," Washington Post, August 14, 1878, p. 1
57. James Randall, Lines on the Yellow Fever Plague, Written for the Bazaar at Douglastown: "We are Doomed" (n.p., 1878)
58. "Laughing Absentees: A Heart-Rendering Statement of the Situation in Memphis," McMinnville (Tenn.) New Era, September 19, 1878, p. 2
59. For another example see Keating, History of the Yellow Fever, 129-31
60. Marshall Wingfield, [ed.], "The Life and Letters of Dr. William J. Armstrong," West Tennessee Historical Society Papers, 4 (1950), 107 (first quotation), 109 (second quotation)
61. Quoted in Paul Hamilton Hayne, Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne (Boston, 1882), 299
62. "Death's Awful March," Washington Post, August 17, 1878, p. 1
63. "Some Peculiarities of Yellow Jack," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 58 (December 1878), 127 (quotation)
64. Isabella L. Bird, The Hawaiian Archipelago: Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands (London, 1875), 5
65. For another warning of the fever in the North see "A Physician's Experience," Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1878, p. 2
66. "A False Report of Yellow Fever," New York Times, September 5, 1878, p. 2
67. "Editorial Notes," New York Independent, September 19, 1878, p. 18
68. "Desolation in the South," New York Times, September 5, 1878, p. 1
69. Another New York writer claimed that yellow fever was "the one all-absorbing topic in this city." See "Our New York Letter," Christian Recorder, September 19, 1878, p. 2
70. "Plague-Smitten Grenada," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 47 (September 7, 1878), 2-3
71. Wingfield, [ed.], "Life and Letters of Dr. William J. Armstrong," 107
72. "Editor's Easy Chair," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 57 (November 1878), 936
73. J. L. Power, The Epidemic of 1878, in Mississippi: Report of the Yellow Fever Relief Work (Jackson, Miss., 1879), 3
74. Report of the Howard Association, of New Orleans, of Receipts, Expenditures, and their Work in the Epidemic of 1878, with Names of Contributors, Etc. (New Orleans, 1878), 6
75. Report of the Special Relief Committee, I. O. O. F. of Memphis, 7
76. Quoted in Ellis, Yellow Fever and Public Health in the New South, 51-52
77. Quoted in Nuwer, "1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Mississippi," 94
78. "Plague-Smitten Grenada," 2-3
79. "The Yellow Fever," Washington Post, August 20, 1878, p. 2
80. "New-York Subscriptions," New York Times, August 25, 1878, p. 2
81. "The Southern Relief Fund," New York Times, August 27, 1878, p. 2
82. Report of the Orleans Central Relief Committee, 73
83. Report of the Relief Work of the Young Men's Christian Association of New Orleans in the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 (New Orleans, 1879), 30
84. Report of the Howard Association, of New Orleans, 31-42, 55
85. Report of the Pittsburgh Relief Committee, Having in Charge the Collection and Distribution of Funds, Provisions, and Other Supplies, For the Sufferers by Yellow Fever, in the South-Western States in the Summer and Fall of 1878 (Pittsburgh, 1879), 17
86. Report of the Relief Work of the Young Men's Christian Association of New Orleans, 21 (quotation)
87. "Editorial Notes," New York Independent, September 12, 1878, p. 17
88. For a discussion of Catholic nurses in Memphis see Randal L. Hall, "Southern Conservatism at Work: Women, Nurses, and the 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Memphis," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 56 (Winter 1997), 244-61
89. "Concert for the Benefit of the Yellow Fever Sufferers, at the M. E. Church, [Martinsburg, W. Va.] Tuesday Evening, Sept. 17th, 1878, at Eight O'Clock" (n.p., 1878)
90. "The Actors and the Fever Fund," New York Times, September 9, 1878, p. 2
91. "More Hopeful," Chicago Tribune, September 17, 1878, pp. 1-2
92. "Woman's Work - Relief Fund - Health Matters - Cottage Meetings - Northern Helpers," 86 (quotations)
93. Keating, History of the Yellow Fever, 337-59, 363
94. see Robert D. Marcus, Grand Old Party: Political Structure in the Gilded Age, 1880-1896 (New York, 1971), 25
95. Report of the Philadelphia Yellow Fever Committee (Philadelphia, 1879), 43-45
96. Keating, History of the Yellow Fever, 117-18, 367-75
97. "The Epidemic," Hickman (Ky.) Courier, September 13, 1878, p. 3
98. "New York Responding Nobly," New York Times, August 28, 1878, p. 2 (second quotation)
99. "Mississippi's Stricken Cities," New York Times, September 7, 1878, pp. 1-2
100. Report of the Pittsburgh Relief Committee, 18
101. "Measures of Relief," New York Times, September 9, 1878, p. 2
102. "The Pest-Scourged South," New York Times, September 10, 1878, p. 1
103. Power, Epidemic of 1878, p. 80
104. Memphis Appeal, October 15, 1878
105. quoted in Peter William Bruton, "The National Board of Health" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1974), 109
106. For a sociological interpretation of group prayer and group consciousness see Matthew P. Lawson, "The Holy Spirit as Conscience Collective," Sociology of Religion, 60 (Winter 1999), 341-61
107. Report of the Pittsburgh Relief Committee, 14
108. For more on nations as imagined communities see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York and London, 1983)
109. "Editorial Notes," New York Independent, August 29, 1878, p. 18 (second quotation)
110. "The Coming Presidential Election," New York Independent, January 4, 1872, p. 1 (first quotation)
111. For more on northern views of southerners at the end of the Civil War see Edward J. Blum, "'Beginning a New War': Religion, Race, and Reunion after Lincoln's Assassination," Mid-America: An Historical Review, 84 (Winter/Summer/Fall 2002), 27-54
112. "North and South," New York Times, September 10, 1878, p. 4
113. "Editor's Easy Chair," 936
114. J. P. Dromgoole, Dr. Dromgoole's Yellow Fever Heroes, Honors, and Horrors of 1878 . . . (Louisville, Ky., 1879), 7
115. J. W. Singleton, Medical Heroism of 1878 (St. Louis, 1879), 11 (first quotation), 10 (second quotation), 8 (third quotation), 9 (fourth quotation)
116. For more on proponents of the New South see Paul M. Gaston. The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking (New York, 1970)
117. Dromgoole, Dr. Dromgoole's Yellow Fever Heroes, Honors, and Horrors, 99
118. For other examples see Nuwer, "1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Mississippi," 151
119. and the letters among members of northern and southern branches of fraternal lodges in Power, Epidemic of 1878, pp. 75-96
120. "Thank God for Frost!" Washington Post, October 21, 1878, p. 1
121. "Our Lesson," New Orleans Daily Picayune, September 4, 1878, p. 4
122. New Orleans Times quoted in "The Southern Relief Fund," New York Times, August 27, 1878, p. 2
123. My analysis of themes of national rebirth in these poems is strongly influenced by Jay Winter's work on poetry during World War I. See Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, Eng., New York, and Melbourne, 1995), 204-22
124. Simmons, Welded Link, 33
125. For information on Palmer see Thomas Cary Johnson, The life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer (Richmond, 1906), 238
126. Proceedings of a Mass Meeting Held in New Orleans, December 6, to Return Thanks for the Succor Extended to the City during the Epidemic of 1878 (New Orleans, 1878), 5-6
127. "New-York Subscriptions," New York Times, August 30, 1878, p. 2
128. Hayes, "Second Annual Message," 492-507 (quotation on p. 492)
129. See Blight, Race and Reunion
130. and Mark Wahlgren Summers, Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884 (Chapel Hill and London, 2000)