Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations Used in Notes
- MAP 1 The Lowcountry, Charleston, and the Caribbean region
- MAP 2 The South Carolina lowcountry, showing Anglican parishes and slave proportion of population, c. 1760s
- MAP 3 Charleston Harbor, based on a British map, c. 1780
- MAP 4 The Revolutionary War in the South
- PART I TALK ABOUT SUFFERING
- PART II COMBATING PESTILENCE
- 8 “I Wish That I Had Studied Physick”
- 9 “I Know Nothing of this Disease”
- 10 Providence, Prudence, and Patience
- 11 Buying the Smallpox
- 12 Commerce, Contagion, and Cleanliness
- 13 A Migratory Species
- 14 Melancholy
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
13 - A Migratory Species
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations Used in Notes
- MAP 1 The Lowcountry, Charleston, and the Caribbean region
- MAP 2 The South Carolina lowcountry, showing Anglican parishes and slave proportion of population, c. 1760s
- MAP 3 Charleston Harbor, based on a British map, c. 1780
- MAP 4 The Revolutionary War in the South
- PART I TALK ABOUT SUFFERING
- PART II COMBATING PESTILENCE
- 8 “I Wish That I Had Studied Physick”
- 9 “I Know Nothing of this Disease”
- 10 Providence, Prudence, and Patience
- 11 Buying the Smallpox
- 12 Commerce, Contagion, and Cleanliness
- 13 A Migratory Species
- 14 Melancholy
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
I perceive by the loss of my strength that I have but a short time to live. If my superiors think I may be of any use here … I am content to live and die in this place under their favourable protection. But if they would think convenient to employ me in any thing I can do in Barbados … I will submit so much the more cheerfully because in those hot climates I have formerly enjoyed more health, than I did here where in ten years time I have had I really believe by computation six years or more sickness.
Francis Le Jau, 1716The ‘yawning grave’ has received whole families within a few hours of one another – but this usually happens to strangers. In June, most people who can afford it leave for the eastern states or elsewhere, to avoid the pestilence. Some … merely remove to Sullivan's Island.
Isaac Holmes, 1823I am miserable; where are we to fly? Like hunted deer – this is the only thicket that promised safety. Oh! Death! That mighty hunter, should it earth us GOD grant we may be prepared.
Adele Vanderhorst?, 1838PERIPATETIC PLANTERS
In the 1850s, a Charleston planter told Fredrick Law Olmsted, “I would as soon stand fifty feet from the best Kentucky rifleman and be shot at by the hour, as to spend a night on my plantation in summer.” The sentiment, if not the exact wording, had been common for many decades.
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- Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry , pp. 249 - 270Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011