Gov. Jackson issued a number of orders and laws to set up American government in the new territory. Among Jackson's first decrees was the order that ships arriving from anywhere in the vast expanse from the Equator to latitude 33 north (Charleston, S.C.) would have to quarantine before docking. Jackson established that the quarantine period might be as short as 24 hours or as long as 40 days.
St. Augustine may well have been the first city in today's U.S. to experience yellow fever. Not every "first" is glorious and you take the bad with the good. Yellow fever arrived in our city in 1649, just two years after it crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the Americas. There were very few cities in today's United States in 1649. New York, Boston and Philadelphia existed. But there was no Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans or Pensacola.