Henry Knox, Secretary for War, recorded in mid-September : ‘the great seat of it at present seems to be from 2 nd to 3 rd street, and thence to Walnut Street. Countless others, including numerous Government clerks and the speaker of the Pennsylvania senate, perished. The sweats, he recorded, were ‘so offensive as to oblige me to draw the bedclothes close to my neck, to defend myself from their smell.’ He survived, as did Alexander Hamilton, Treasury Secretary, and his wife, Betsy. Physician Benjamin Rush recorded his symptoms.

By early September, despite the best efforts of doctors, hundreds were dying. Washington’s deficiencies on the national and international stage were forgotten in the urgent need to address the chaotic situation. A drought had succeeded heavy spring rains and pockets of standing water abounded where these insects thrived. No one then understood the role of mosquitoes in transmitting the virus. The President dwelt, in conversation with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, on ‘the extreme wretchedness of his existence’.Īnd then, in July and August, yellow fever developed in the city. They criticized the stately receptions that George and Martha Washington hosted each week at their Market Street home as ‘monarchical’. Anti-federalists condemned the President’s insistence on American neutrality, after France declared war on Britain. In 1793 Philadelphia was the seat of government, and the republic, still young. What if, in 1793, the deadly epidemic had killed off Washington and all his Cabinet, bar none? A Netflix series for someone other than me to make about President Hamilton or Knox or Randolph … Ultimately, I’m always more interested in fact than fiction. A Secretary of Housing is sworn in as President, after he escapes a bomb at the Capitol that kills the rest of the government. I blame Designated Survivor on Netflix, which I’ve been watching. Recently, however, I’ve been indulging wild thoughts about the yellow fever epidemic that afflicted Philadelphia in the summer of 1793, at the outset of Washington’s second term of office.

I’m not normally one to pursue the “What if’s” of counterfactual history.

The Washingtons by Flora Fraser