New York Challenged – The City’s Response to Crisis and Change from Colonial Times to Present
Documents E , F and G - Cholera Outbreak in 1832

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Document F - Report of the Cholera Outbreak in the New York Mercury, July 18, 1832.
In general, indiscretions in drink and diet were regarded as the most important predisposing causes: a pineapple or watermelon was a death warrant, a dozen oysters, suicide. Overindulgence in alcohol was the most dangerous of all "exciting causes." Though temperance might not save the lives of confirmed drunkards, yet it would "save their friends the unspeakable mortification of having it doubted whether Cholera or dissipation was the cause of their death."

Every day's experience gives us increased assurance of the safety of the temperate and prudent, who are in circumstances of comfort . . . . The disease is now, more than before rioting in the haunts of infamy and pollution. A prostitute at 6z Mott Street, who was decking herself before the glass at i o'clock yesterday, was carried away in a hearse at half past three o'clock. The broken down constitutions of these miserable creatures, perish almost instantly on the attack .... But the business part of our population, in general, appear to be in perfect health and security.

Document G - T. Gardiner Spring, A Sermon Preached August 3, 1832, "A Day Set Apart in the City of New-York for Public Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer ..."
(New York, 1832).Cholera had another function besides demonstrating to man the power of the Lord and the futility of earthly values. This was to "promote the cause of righteousness, by sweeping away the obdurate and the incorrigible," and "to drain off the filth and scum which contaminate and defile human society." The great majority of those who fell before this destroyer were the enemies of God. They lived only to scatter about them the "firebrands, arrows, and death" of eternal damnation. The order of the universe required the destruction of unregenerate sinners on the same ground that human society required jails and chains for those who disturbed its peace. As the editor of the Western Sunday School Messenger explained to the "dear children" who studied his weekly column:

"Drunkards and filthy, wicked people of all descriptions, are swept away in heaps, as if the Holy God could no longer bear their wickedness, just as we sweep away a mass of filth when it has become so corrupt that we cannot bear it .... The cholera is not caused by intemperance and filth, in themselves, but it is a scourge, a rod in the hand of God ...."

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