When the death toll mounted from scores to hundreds, from hundreds to thousands, the neighboring villages and towns met to devise plans for keeping the Philadelphians away, and one of these threatened to receive them ‘at the point of the bayonet.’[859] The hospitals were packed—two hundred Irishmen in the Naval Hospital alone.[860] Meanwhile the physicians were fighting courageously, desperately, but blindly and futilely. Fisher Ames, who had a malicious humor, was amused at their plight and methods. ‘All vouch success—none have it,’ he wrote, ‘and like Sangrado’s patients they die for want of bleeding and warm water enough.’ One doctor treated the disease as a plague—‘his patients died’; he adopted Rush’s methods—‘they died.’ He hit upon a combination of the methods—‘all died.’[861] Bache filled his columns with cures and suggestions, but the death-rate increased frightfully. It was impossible to keep a record. On October 20th, Wolcott wrote Washington that ‘more than four thousand persons have died,’ and the next day Pickering wrote him that ‘about three thousand have died.’[862] As many as 517 were buried in the Potter’s Field between August 19th and October 1st.[863]
The streets deserted, houses closed, death-like silence but for the rattle of burial wagons and the groans of the stricken, the tread of robbers in the night—the horrors deepened. No one understood the reason why—no one but Alexander Graydon, who thought it a grim visitation of God to purge the foul hearts of the Philadelphians because of their enthusiasm for French democracy. One of the democrats had fallen early, when Dr. Hutchinson paid his profession the honor of dying in the harness. One day he met a friend in the street and urged him to take his family and leave. Was the Doctor going? No, he felt it his duty to stay and serve the sick. Was he not afraid? Well, he thought he would probably fall a victim, and bade the friend farewell. A few days later he was dead—the greatest hero of the scourge.[864]
Meanwhile, Jefferson, living in the country, thought it his duty to go to the city every day, and did. And then Graydon’s God made a blunder that must have made the angels weep—he struck Hamilton down with the blow that must have been intended for the Jacobin Jefferson.
Living two miles out in the country, Hamilton was stricken violently. Having given thought to the disease, he had conceived that cold water would be effective. He summoned Dr. Stevens and many attendants—‘the method being expensive’—and through cold water and bark he was cured.[865] ‘Colonel Hamilton is ill of the fever but is recovering,’ Jefferson wrote Robert Morris who had taken to flight.[866] By the time the country knew of Hamilton’s peril he had recovered, and, with his family, had hastened to the Schuylers at Albany.
With the approach of winter the disease receded—died out.
XV
Even so, there was no disposition on the part of Congress to meet in the gloomy city, and November found the Government established temporarily in Germantown. The statesmen had to accommodate themselves to wretched quarters. Jefferson ‘got a bed in the corner of a public room in a tavern,’[867] but it mattered little to him, for his time was short. As late as December 22d, Washington made a final effort to persuade him to remain. ‘I hope it will be the last set at me to continue,’ Jefferson wrote Martha.[868]
The publication of his correspondence with both Genêt and Hammond had raised him in the esteem of his worst enemies. No one then or since has pretended to the discovery of undue partiality in the treatment of the offenses of the two nations. In the field of foreign relations the papers of Jefferson during this period were as distinguished as those of Hamilton in the sphere of finance.
But he was to submit to Congress a final Report on Commerce which was to cut short his popularity with his enemies. ‘The letting loose of the Algerines on us, which was contrived by England, has produced a peculiar irritation,’ he wrote his daughter. ‘I think Congress will indemnify themselves by high duties on all articles of British importation.’[869] Here he was referring to his Report.
In this notable document, which his party instantly adopted as a chart by which to steer, he laid down some broad general propositions which called for retaliation on England. If a nation placed high duties on our products, we should place high duties on its products, even to excluding articles that came into competition with our own. Where a nation prohibited American merchants or agents from residing in parts of its domain, we could retaliate with propriety. If it refused to receive in our vessels any products but our own, we could adopt a similar regulation as to theirs. If it declined to consider any vessel as ours not built in our territory, the rule could work both ways. All this was accompanied with a report on our relative commercial intercourse with both England and France. The purpose was in harmony with the policy for which Madison had fought from the beginning.[870]