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Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffery Amherst

Elizabeth Fenn's 2000 article on the Fort Pitt episode.

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Amherst and Bouquet on smallpox, July 1763 Scholarship & press 1
Fenn writes that the Fort Pitt act came before the letters and was not ordered by them.
Smallpox-hospital blankets given at Fort Pitt, 1763 Scholarship & press 1
An invoice from the firm Levy, Trent and Company, quoted by Fenn from the Bouquet papers. Fenn notes that Trent's journal mentions one handkerchief and the invoice two.
Smallpox-hospital blankets given at Fort Pitt, 1763 Scholarship & press 1 2
Historians disagree about the effect. Philip Ranlet and Paul Kelton are quoted by HISTORY; Elizabeth Fenn finds the timing "uncanny" but writes that blame cannot be placed squarely on the British.
Smallpox-hospital blankets given at Fort Pitt, 1763 Scholarship & press 1

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2000 Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffery Amherst

Proof 2 sources

Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffery Amherst, The Journal of American History, 2000. Scholarship & press
Unbeknownst to both Bouquet and his commander in chief, their subordinates at Fort Pitt had already conceived and executed the very plan proposed.
To Sundries got to Replace in kind those which were taken from people in the Hospital to Convey the Smallpox to the Indians
What the documents do show, however, is that smallpox struck hard among the Indians around Fort Pitt in the spring and summer of 1763.
As the historian Michael McConnell has pointed out, it is possible and perhaps likely that the epidemic stemmed from multiple sources of infection.
Trent reported that two Delaware dignitaries, Turtle's Heart and Mamaltee, visited Fort Pitt late at night and asked to speak with post officials.
Elizabeth A. Fenn Did he or didn't he? For generations, the Amherst-smallpox blanket episode has elicited animated debate
Did Colonists Give Infected Blankets to Native Americans as Biological Warfare?, HISTORY, 15 Nov 2018. Scholarship & press
There is no evidence that the scheme worked
That’s the one documented case that we have
We can’t be sure

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