https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-founding-fathers-would-want-us-to-get-the-covid-19-vaccine-152932

In 1776, however, Washington learned that a massive outbreak had decimated patriot forces in Québec and that the fear of smallpox kept new recruits from enlisting in the Continental ranks. John Adams, one of the patriot leaders of Massachusetts, called smallpox “10 times more terrible” than any human foe.

And so, in early 1777, Washington ordered all Continental soldiers to undergo inoculation, followed by a period of strict isolation. Within a year, smallpox had all but disappeared from his camp, saving the army and probably the Revolution.

The General trusted that even the “most rigid opposers” of inoculation would change their minds in the face of its “amazing” success…

More than any other Founder, Jefferson feared and despised British power. This is what made him radical: He dreamed of a world beyond the shadows cast by Royal Navy vessels and mechanized factories. He also celebrated scientific progress in general and medical advances in particular, once helping to draft a new, pro-inoculation law in Virginia in 1777.

And so Jefferson, the anti-British President, wrote to Edward Jenner in 1806, thanking the doctor on behalf of “the whole human family.” Jefferson also boasted that he was “among the early converts” to the technique. (Jefferson didn’t mention that he had tested the new technique on the enslaved members of his “family.”)…

Jefferson’s successor as president, James Madison, was a true believer in the limited powers that the U.S. Constitution — of which he was a principal author — granted the president, even in times of war.

Of course, the constitution did not specify a public health role for the federal government, either. In the early months of the war, however, Congress passed a bill to create a National Vaccine Institute, which would send vaccinia free of charge across the vast new country.

As the physician in charge of the institute argued, “every citizen should have the right secured to him of a free access” to this lifesaving material.

For Madison, this was not a constitutional issue but rather a common sense measure on behalf of what the constitution called the “general welfare,” a good deed that no good government could fail to do…