A Short Account of the Malignant Fever

Local black leaders Absalom Jones and Richard Allen thought that Carey's account did not give sufficient credit to black residents who volunteered as nurses during the outbreak, and published a counter-narrative, “A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia (1794).

Carey agreed with their assessment and revised his pamphlet a fourth time to present that view.

Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in the beginning of September, advising him of the disaster the epidemic would cause throughout the city.

[2] According to numerous scholars, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote to Richard Allen, a black preacher and leader of the Free African Society, appealing to him and his people for help.

Rush believed that blacks might have immunity to the disease, as he had read accounts by another doctor of a yellow fever in epidemic in Charleston, in which they were reported as surviving at higher rates than whites.