America’s yellow fever ordeal did not end in 1793. Except for 1796, the disease struck at least one major American seaport every year between 1794 and 1800. Some Americans were already hostile toward city life, and the fever’s disproportionate impact on the country’s urban centers reinforced those preexisting attitudes. In this exchange, Thomas Jefferson and Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush discuss the relationship between cities and epidemic disease. Written shortly before Jefferson won a hard-fought election for the presidency against John Adams, his letter attests to his agrarian vision for the new nation.
From Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush
Monticello, Sep. 23. 1800.
DEAR SIR,
I have to acknolege the reciept of your favor of Aug. 22. and to congratulate you on the healthiness of your city. still Baltimore, Norfolk & Providence admonish us that we are not clear of our new scourge. when great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us: and Providence has in fact so established the order of things as that most evils are the means of producing some good. the yellow fever will discourage the growth of great cities in our nation; & I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. true, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in the others with more health virtue & freedom would be my choice….
From Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson
Philadelphia, October 6th 1800.
DEAR SIR,
I agree with you in your Opinion of Cities. Cowper the poet very happily expresses our ideas of them compared with the Country. “God made the Country — man made Cities.” I consider them in the same light that I do Abscesses on the human body viz: as reservoirs of all the impurities of a Community….
Source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 32, 1 June 1800?–16 February 1801, ed. Barbara B. Oberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 166–69, 204–07.
Evaluating the Evidence