The Great Horse Flu

A Forgotten Contagion and the Fate of Reconstruction America

Thomas G. Andrews

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781469698434
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469696355
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Seven years after the US Civil War and nearly 150 years before COVID, horses near Toronto began falling deathly ill with a sickness soon diagnosed as influenza. It took just a few weeks for this mutant flu variant to spread throughout southeastern Canada and into the northeastern US, infecting more than 90 percent of horses, donkeys, and mules wherever it struck. By the time the outbreak relented more than a year later, the Great Horse Flu of 1872 to 1873 had convulsed nearly every corner of North America and parts of Cuba, Mexico, and Central America.

This little-known scourge paralyzed the continent’s horse-powered economy at a critical political moment. As hundreds of thousands of animals died and entire cities ground to a halt, the outbreak exposed the fragility of industrial capitalism and the US’s deep dependence on animal labor. The Great Horse Flu triggered catastrophes such as the Great Boston Fire, unleashed seething social and racial conflict, stoked partisan divides, and set the stage for the Panic of 1873. In the hands of Bancroft Prize–winning historian Thomas G. Andrews, the gripping story of this animal plague becomes a revelatory history of American Reconstruction itself—its possibilities, limitations, and demise—while also illuminating the grave perils that novel viral variants pose to animals, humans, and the world we share.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents Page
• Introduction. A Pitiless Malady
• Chapter 1 Evolution and Emergence: A Scourge Is Born
• Chapter 2 Capitalism’s Creatures: The Great Horse Flu as Parasite
• Chapter 3 A Horse’s Letter: Sympathy, Healing, and the Limits of Humanitarianism
• Chapter 4 The Great Horse Flu and the Great Boston Fire: Ailing Animals, Aging Infrastructure, and Urban Disaster
• Chapter 5 A Most Unwelcome Ghost: Unsettling Rural Economies in the South and Midwest
• Chapter 6 Viral Lies and Influenza’s Progress: Indian Country, the Great West, and Partisan Plagues
• Chapter 7 Epizootic Offensives: Mexico and the Southwest’s Indigenous Borderlands
• Chapter 8 Celestial Steeds: Human Haulage and Anti-Chinese Racism in San Francisco
• Chapter 9 Other Worlds to Conquer: Closing Throes and Enduring Legacies
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Sources, Mapping, and Companion Website
• Notes
• Index