Covid-19 needs federal leadership, not Donald Trump’s authoritarianism

This is in line with the Trump administrations’ overall response to the pandemic, which has left frustrated governors largely on their own and think about a consortium not to bid against each other for essential equipment and to facilitate purchases.

Although Trump now claims total power in his rhetoric, his abdication of federal leadership has left governors struggling to fill the void. Their difficult situation left some observers to see a similar situation in the early days of the country under articles of the Confederation (1781-1789). The powers of Congress have been severely limited and state governments have been left alone in the face of disasters. During this period, the federal government could not claim responsibility for a public health crisis like the current pandemic.

But the situation may in fact be more like the period following the ratification of the Constitution in the hope of solving these problems. Even though Congress had many new powers, for years after, the federal government still refused to take responsibility for the health of American citizens, even when state governors specifically requested federal assistance. As the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 shows, this refusal to accept responsibility could have catastrophic consequences.

The articles of Confederation proved inapplicable because the federal government had no executive power. Congress could not legislate, but it could not enforce them, relying instead on state governments to enforce these laws. Without an operational federal government, some states have flouted treaties, defaulted on debts, and imposed tariffs that have hurt American trade and the international reputation of the United States.

Many of its drafters wanted the Constitution to dramatically improve the ability of Congress to impose its laws directly on the citizens of the United States and to circumscribe the actions of state governments in the areas of foreign, military, and fiscal policy. But most early American leaders would argue that public health management still rests exclusively with state and local governments. Governor Henry Lee of Virginia learned this lesson the hard way in the summer of 1793, when he learned that a plague had broken out in the Caribbean.

In June Lee received alarming news that reports were arriving at ports along the east coast that a plague was ravaging the Windward Islands. Local authorities knew that ships would travel between these islands and the coast of North America and would almost certainly bring with them what was probably fatal yellow fever. Lee did not know how to react to this new threat. He had heard that Governor William Moultrie of South Carolina had imposed a quarantine on his state’s ports, but, Lee wondered, shouldn’t the national government be responsible for responding to this impending national disaster?

Lee wrote to his fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, to the secretary of state for George Washingtons, and to a former governor of Virginia himself. Lee told Jefferson that Moultrie had imposed his own state quarantine, but that he himself understood that the right to act on this matter belongs to the general government. Virginia had state laws that would allow her to impose quarantine, yes, but there was a problem. These laws gave authority to manage the process to customs officials residing in ports, and the federal government had now taken over the state customs service. Thus, the quarantine should be managed by federal officials.

But Jefferson did not agree with this interpretation. No provision on this subject was provided for by the laws of the general government, he wrote, which would allow the president to intervene. Since Congress had passed no law specifically addressing the problem of disease management, Jefferson argued that the federal government could not prevent the epidemic. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Jefferson believed that federal public servants should act only when the Constitution expressly authorized them to do so.

Lee finally replied that the state government would make its own arrangements to deal with the crisis and that if the president wanted, he could order customs officials to assist in the proper enforcement of the regulations. But for now, the state would continue alone.

The results of federal inaction were most visible in Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States, where the plague arrived later in the summer and fall. Federal authorities living in the city, including Jefferson, fled the disease as quickly as possible, leaving the management of the disaster to local authorities and doctors. About 5,000 Philadelphians died in the epidemic, while the governments of several nearby cities closed their doors to refugees from the city ravaged by the disease. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and his wife were turned back from several cities as they crossed New Jersey en route to New York this fall, residents fearful of taking the infection with them.

Federal inaction has meant that different states and cities have taken various measures, including some staggering cruelty. Cities and sometimes entire states have set up armed guards at their borders to prevent evacuees from Philadelphia from entering. Ships have been sent back to sea without fresh water, and gloomy stories have circulated of migrants left behind due to famine on the outskirts of cities.

The lack of a unified national response has increased panic and misinformation, fueling the enactment of these harsh and cruel measures. He also left a handful of ordinary local citizens and medical personnel, male and female, in black and white to try to manage the situation in Philadelphia. With little government support, they paid their lives with charitable donations, many of them dying of fever during the process.

Despite these efforts, the yellow fever epidemic has truly been a national disaster. In 1793, not only Philadelphia, but also Portsmouth, NH, was hit hard by the disease, and returned the following year to kill many in New York, Charleston, Baltimore, Providence, and Norfolk, as feared. Henry Lee.

But it will take another five years before Congress and President John Adams make any arrangements for a federal response to the epidemic disease by providing[ing] for the temporary relief and maintenance of sick and disabled seafarers in US ports. Despite this, the federal government has generally continued to treat disease and public health as matters that state and municipal governments had to deal with themselves until the end of the civil war.

In 1800, many large cities were forced to create independent municipal health boards to help manage sanitation and prevent the spread of infectious diseases within their boundaries, while some state governments organized and funded their own hospitals.

By leaving the management of epidemic diseases to national and local authorities, the first American leaders contributed to the chaos and disturbances that accompanied terrifying epidemics. Today, such a posture would be even more dangerous, given our considerably increased travel capacity and our interconnection.

The federal government can avoid these mistakes by coordinating a unified national response to the coronavirus crisis. The success of American federalism has always depended on cooperation and not on a combative relationship between the different governments of the nations.