Skip to main content

The timeline can be navigated with the “Scroll Left” and “Scroll Right” buttons or by dragging the pointer to a date on the timeline waveform (located at the bottom of the screen on the desktop version and on the left of the screen on mobile). To filter by a particular topic and see a smaller section of the data, make a selection on the dropdown “Filters” menu or click “Search” to do a keyword search. Hover over the abbreviated filter tags in the blue boxes to see the complete name of the filter, or click a filter to display all the data with this tag. If you want to take a deeper dive into a specific topic by viewing a narrative essay page and a curated timeline, click on “Stories.”

Read More

Josiah Nott argues that Southern climate is ideal for plantation slavery.

Date: 1857

MED
EPD
ENV
SRA
SLA

Nott, a white physician in Mobile, Alabama, publishes “Acclimation; or, the Comparative Influence of Climate, Endemic and Epidemic Diseases, on the Races of Men." It will become an influential and popular essay in Southern medical communities. Focusing on the relationship between medicine and climate, he states that bodies work best in their "natural" climates. He uses this theory to explain why "the South was an ideal space for plantation slavery, fit for the occupational health of each race’s role" (Willoughby, 2017).