{"id":1854,"date":"2024-10-30T00:06:20","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T00:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/?p=1854"},"modified":"2025-09-01T18:15:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T18:15:23","slug":"onesimus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/onesimus\/","title":{"rendered":"Onesimus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Man Who Taught America About Inoculation <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 1706, Boston Massachusetts Puritan preacher Cotton Mather was\u00a0given a human as a \u201cgift\u201d from his church congregation. Mather\u00a0renamed him Onesimus, a Greek word for \u201cuseful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1716, Onesimus purchased half of his freedom after being permitted to\u00a0work for wages outside the home, but was still required to do evening\u00a0chores at the Mather home. Onesimus was married with two recorded\u00a0children, who both died in childhood. There are no records about who\u00a0his wife was, and it is believed that she was enslaved by someone\u00a0other than Cotton Mather.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Onesimus, likely from modern-day Ghana, saw the smallpox outbreak\u00a0in 1721. Inoculation was a common practice in his home country, and\u00a0he described to Mather the practice of inoculation. Mather discussed it\u00a0with Doctor Zabdiel Boylston. Dr Boylston tested inoculation for\u00a0himself on his son and enslaved people before he decided it was a safe\u00a0way to help other people.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once information began to circulate about inoculation and it was\u00a0offered to people as protection from smallpox, Mather and Dr Boylston\u00a0encountered reactions they did not expect: Some people, upon\u00a0learning that the practice was suggested by an enslaved person,\u00a0accused inoculation of being a conspiracy by enslaved people to\u00a0overthrow the enslavers and refused.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other people refused the inoculation because they believed death\u00a0from smallpox to be righteous judgement from above for evildoers.\u00a0Not everyone was against the practice though. George\u00a0Washington ordered all the troops to be inoculated\u00a0during the Revolutionary War to prevent the spread of\u00a0the disease that could weaken the military.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpost in the American Revolution by Andrew M. Wehrman <\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to Covid-19 by John Fabian Witt<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is a short read, but an overview of American history and how diseases have effected socioeconomic groups differently. <\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Man Who Taught America About Inoculation In 1706, Boston Massachusetts Puritan preacher Cotton Mather was\u00a0given a human as a \u201cgift\u201d from his church congregation. Mather\u00a0renamed him Onesimus, a Greek word for \u201cuseful.\u201d\u00a0 In 1716, Onesimus purchased half of his freedom after being permitted to\u00a0work for wages outside the home, but was still required to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biographies","category-books-about-asian-americans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1859,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions\/1859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}