Early smallpox vaccine is tested

Year
1796
Month Day
May 14

Edward Jenner, an English country doctor from Gloucestershire, administers the world’s first vaccination as a preventive treatment for smallpox, a disease that had killed millions of people over the centuries.

While still a medical student, Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had contracted a disease called cowpox, which caused blistering on cow’s udders, did not catch smallpox. Unlike smallpox, which caused severe skin eruptions and dangerous fevers in humans, cowpox led to few ill symptoms in these women. 

READ MORE: How an Enslaved African Man Helped Save Generations from Smallpox

On May 14, 1796, Jenner took fluid from a cowpox blister and scratched it into the skin of James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy. A single blister rose up on the spot, but James soon recovered. On July 1, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with smallpox matter, and no disease developed. The vaccine was a success. Doctors all over Europe soon adopted Jenner’s innovative technique, leading to a drastic decline in new sufferers of the devastating disease.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, scientists following Jenner’s model developed new vaccines to fight numerous deadly diseases, including polio, whooping cough, measles, tetanus, yellow fever, typhus, and hepatitis B and many others. More sophisticated smallpox vaccines were also developed and by 1970 international vaccination programs, such as those undertaken by the World Health Organization, had eliminated smallpox worldwide.

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George Washington prepares final draft of farewell address

Year
1796
Month Day
September 17

George Washington prepares a final draft of his presidential farewell address on September 17, 1796. Two days later, the carefully crafted words appeared in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, published in Philadelphia, officially notifying the American public that Washington would voluntarily step down as the nation’s first president. The decision was extraordinary: rarely, if ever, in the history of western civilization had a national leader voluntarily relinquished his title. The action set a model for successive U.S. administrations and future democracies.

READ MORE: How Washington’s Farewell Address Inspired Future Presidents

Historians have since discovered that Washington dated the draft of the address to coincide with the nine-year anniversary of the adoption of the first draft of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Scholars agree that Alexander Hamilton, former aide to Washington during the Revolutionary War and the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, wrote much of the address. Washington was greatly influenced by his federalist cohort Hamilton throughout their professional relationship, much to the frustration of the Republican members of his government, particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It was Madison who had helped pen a farewell draft for Washington at the end of his first term, which Hamilton had initially used as a template for the final farewell address. That version was ultimately tossed aside, however, in favor of one drafted from scratch by Hamilton. He and Washington spent the summer of 1796 finalizing the speech, which was delivered for printing in September.

Many Americans had hoped or assumed that Washington would serve another term or even until his death. As Washington’s second term came to a close in early 1797, he was in poor health, exhausted from years of internal squabbling amongst members of his cabinet and ready to retire to his beloved plantation in Virginia. According to biographer Ron Chernow, although Hamilton wrote much of the speech, it was faithful to Washington’s style and tone. In addition to laying out his hopes for America’s future, the address called for an end to partisan politics and maintained that Washington’s decision not to run for a third term was in the best interests of the country. “I have…contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable,” he humbly admitted. Desiring the “shade of retirement,” Washington reminded the people that his position as president was designed to be temporary. He believed it was his patriotic duty to uphold the Constitution and pass on his role as the nation’s top public servant to someone else.

READ MORE: George Washington’s Final Years—And Sudden, Agonizing Death

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Editorial accuses Thomas Jefferson of affair with enslaved woman

Year
1796
Month Day
October 19

On October 19, 1796, an essay appears in the Gazette of the United States in which a writer, mysteriously named “Phocion,” slyly attacks presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson. Phocion turned out to be former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. The essay typified the nasty, personal nature of political attacks in late 18th-century America.

When the article appeared, Jefferson was running against then-Vice President John Adams, in an acrimonious campaign. The highly influential Hamilton, also a Federalist, supported Adams over Jefferson, one of Hamilton’s political rivals since the two men served together in George Washington’s first cabinet. According to Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow, Hamilton wrote 25 essays under the name Phocion for the Gazette between October 15 and November 24, lambasting Jefferson and Jeffersonian republicanism. On October 19, Hamilton went further, accusing Jefferson of carrying on an affair with one of his enslaved workers.

READ MORE: The Scandal That Ruined Alexander Hamilton’s Chances of Becoming President

This would not be the last time such allegations would appear in print. In 1792, publisher James Callendar—then a supporter of Jefferson’s whose paper was secretly funded by Jefferson and his Republican allies–published a report of Alexander Hamilton’s adulterous affair with a colleague’s wife, to which Hamilton later confessed. However, in 1802, when then-President Jefferson snubbed Callendar’s request for a political appointment, Callendar retaliated with an expose on Jefferson’s “concubine.” He is believed to have been referring to Sally Hemings, who was part black and also the likely half-sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife, Martha. Further, the article alleged that Sally’s son, John, bore a “striking…resemblance to those of the President himself.” Jefferson chose not to respond to the allegations.

Rumors that the widowed Jefferson had an affair with one of his enslaved workers persist to this day and have spawned years of scholarly and scientific research regarding his and Hemings’ alleged progeny. In 2000, a research report issued by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation used DNA test results, original documents, oral histories, and statistical analysis of the historical record to conclude that Thomas Jefferson was probably the father of Sally Hemings’s son Eston and likely her other children.

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