Wall tombs in St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans c.1925
The “intolerant” Yankees are occupying New Orleans just in time for Yellow Fever season; what’s more they are putting a hospital right in a heavily populated section of the city.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch May 14, 1862:
Advance of “Bronze John.”
The Yankee invaders are taking possession of buildings in the most populous parts of New Orleans for the purpose of establishing hospitals therein; and the papers of the city very properly protest against the proceeding. The Evans House, on Poyuras street, is thus occupied, and the Picayune says:
As to the unsuitableness of the buiding for that purpose, we have nothing to say. That is their concern, not outs. We do say, however, that the location of a military hospital on one of our leading business thoroughfares, and in the heart of the city, is very indudicious and reprehensible. It is fraught with danger, and ought to be at once abandoned. We speak plainly because we are just entering on the summer and our unhealthy season, and it is our duty at all times to protest against any measure that is calculated to jeopardize the health of the city. More especially is this duty not to be disregarded now that thousands of unacclimated persons have been thrust upon us. All the precautions which wisdom and experience have suggested have not hitherto prevented the almost annual visits of the devastating scourge of our sunny clime, and there is, in our present condition, very great reason to fear that the summer of 1862 will be frightfully memorable for the ravages of the yellow fever in New Orleans. In so former year has there been here so much food for the terrible pastilence, and we shudder when the probability of its outbreak is forced upon our attention by what we see around us. Already the effect of the climate on the strangers within our gates is apparent to every observer, and we know not at what moment the fearful harvest of death may commence.
It is not only our duty to protest against any proceeding that has a tendency to endanger the health of our fair city, but it is the duty of the dominant military authority here to be especially careful to avoid the necessity for such protest by well considered judicious sanitary regulations. The establishment of a hospital on Poydras street, between Camp and Magezene streets, a certainly not a measure calculated to give confidence to those who, by sad experience, know the critical position in which we stand at this moment, or to calm the fears of the timid and unaccilmated.
There is a lot of information about “Bronze John . . . Yellow Jack . . . the Saffron Scourge” at Haunted New Orleans Tours. The deadliest year was in 1853, when the first victim was a newly arrived Irishman – that would explain why the Picayune was so concerned about putting sick, “unaccilmated” northerners in the middle of the city. It was not until 1881 when it was first hypothesized that Yellow fever might be caused by mosquitos.
