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
- 1 Rhetoric and Reality
- 2 From Paradise to Hospital
- 3 “A Scene of Diseases”
- 4 Wooden Horse
- 5 Revolutionary Fever
- 6 Strangers' Disease
- 7 “A Merciful Provision of the Creator”
- PART II COMBATING PESTILENCE
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
7 - “A Merciful Provision of the Creator”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
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
- 1 Rhetoric and Reality
- 2 From Paradise to Hospital
- 3 “A Scene of Diseases”
- 4 Wooden Horse
- 5 Revolutionary Fever
- 6 Strangers' Disease
- 7 “A Merciful Provision of the Creator”
- PART II COMBATING PESTILENCE
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
The flux which prevailed amongst [the slaves], could not be stopped by the most able of our physicians. From this disorder 13 are now dead and some still not out of danger and the best that remain in a poor and meager condition.
Henry Laurens, 1756Here the negro enjoys better health in the vicinity of the rice fields, and arrives at greater longevity than he does in the mountains. He requires not to be acclimated, but is constitutionally at home along the shores of our sluggish rivers, and in situations adapted to the culture of indigo, cotton, and rice, where a similar exposure would prove fatal to the white man. Short-sighted men may ascribe all this to accidental causes and the results of blind chance; we confess, however, we view it in a different light – we see in it evidences of design – we regard it as a merciful provision of the Creator in imparting to the human constitution the tendency to produce varieties adapted to every climate and every country.
John Bachman, The Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race, 1850Stoke Martha is sick. Rock Sena has some fever. Harcules is sick. Driver Simon is sick. Stoke Hetty is sick. Stoke Mudlong is sick. Marcia is sick. Saby is sick. Duckey's Tom is sick.
Thomas Sinkler, overseer, Stoke Plantation, August 1833RICE, SLAVERY, AND DEATH
The combination of rice and slavery did more than anything else to make the lowcountry the richest and deadliest region in British North America.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry , pp. 125 - 148Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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