Hidden Terrors

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Between 1832 and 1836, the bacteria Vibrio cholerae caused numerous episodes of mass mortality in cities, small towns, prisons, worksites, and plantations throughout the United States. These outbreaks were part of a larger global pandemic, which occurred before the discovery that sewage-contaminated water spread the disease. Believing their nation to be filled with prosperous, self-disciplined, and independent citizens, Americans of perceived respectability and influence imagined that cholera would find few victims among them, especially when compared to the tyrannical regimes of Asia and Europe, which kept teeming masses in a state of dependence and degradation. They were wrong. Cholera thrived in Jackson’s America. Causing massive diarrhea, painful spasms, blue skin, and death within twenty-four hours of symptoms, Vibrio produced horrifying scenes. The disease not only found victims among the poor and oppressed, of which the US had plenty—recently arrived Irish immigrants, enslaved African Americans, and dispossessed Indigenous peoples—but struck down people of all ranks and inflicted heavy losses in communities thought to be safe. Through the pandemic’s duration, however, powerful people used their public voices to minimize and obscure what was a terrifying reality for diverse Americans. Temperance advocates, medical authorities, newspaper editors, and civic leaders attributed deaths to individual failings, especially drinking alcohol, and disregarded the injustices that enhanced vulnerability. They ignored the numerous deaths among their own ranks, stuck to a delusive narrative that blinded Americans to contradictions to their democracy, and denied a shared humanity that united all people amid the threat of a mysterious killer.</jats:p>