Haitian refugees may have introduced yellow fever to Philadelphia

Evidence

That year, Jefferson’s troubles over revolting Haitians also hit closer to home. A ship or two of distressed masters and slaves from Haiti arrived in Philadelphia in late July. Philadelphians started dying a week later. By August 20, 1793, Benjamin Rush had fatefully noticed the pattern of the contagion of yellow fever. But it was not yet an epidemic, so Rush had time in the late summer to attend to other matters. He possibly sent off letters to abolitionists around the nation. The next year, he welcomed to Philadelphia twenty-two delegates from abolitionist societies across the United States as they arrived for the “American Convention for promoting the Abolition of Slavery and Improving the Condition of the African Race.” The convention met over the next few years and then sporadically over the next three decades, pressing for gradual emancipation, anti-kidnapping legislation, and civil rights for alleged runaways. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 325

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that Haitian refugee ships caused the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic — is this supported or contested in the historical literature?
• XREF: connects to: Jefferson treated the Haitian revolution as a contagious disease to contain — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 784; Yellow fever killed French reinforcements faster than battle could — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 992
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Jefferson treated the Haitian revolution as a contagious disease to contain — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 784; Yellow fever killed French reinforcements faster than battle could — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 992