Ohio representative Jim Jordan recently tweeted this:
Not really. Here is The Washington Post:
At a time when the delta variant’s summer surge has renewed the nation’s divisions over coronavirus vaccines, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday said mandates enforcing vaccination do not reflect what it means to be American.
“Vaccine mandates are un-American,” Jordan tweeted.
But critics panned Jordan’s Labor Day message as being off — way off — by nearly 2½ centuries. George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, made the bold decision in 1777 to require that his troops be immunized after a smallpox outbreak devastated the nation.
The act would be repeated by presidents and military leaders throughout U.S. history — including last month by the Defense Department — and a 1905 decision by the Supreme Court upheld mandatory vaccinations as American.
When I want to learn something about vaccines and inoculation in early American history, I turn to Andrew Wehrman of Central Michigan University. Here are a few links to his public writing on disease, inoculation, and public health in the 18th century:
In August, Wehrman was a guest on the Infectious Historians podcast. The episode was titled, “Smallpox, Inoculations, and the American Revolution“
“We can repeat Boston’s 1776 freedom summer,” Washington Post, July 2, 2021.
Wehrman’s work is featured in this Voice of America piece titled “What would US Founding Fathers Say to Anti-Maskers?“
He was also on the Ben Franklin’s World podcast.
Here are some highlights from his Twitter feed:
