16. The harvests at the end of summer were particularly poor
Virtually all of the American landscape in crops north of Pennsylvania – in New York, New England, eastern Ohio and Michigan – was hit with a frost on September 27 which was severe enough to freeze the little water within the plants, a situation known as a black frost. It was more than two weeks earlier than average for such an event, and the first of several such frosts over the course of the next few days. It was the end of the autumn harvest for all of New England, and most of New York. The summer-long drought, which had begun in June, continued unabated. As autumn began forest fires, some from natural causes and some from the foibles of humanity, ravaged the New England landscape, driving away the game which would be needed to survive the winter in the absence of domestically produced meat.
The forest fires also burned the wood which New Englanders needed for heat in the coming winter, and even those woods not yet aflame were rendered too dangerous to enter to collect firewood as fires spread rapidly. New England’s corn crop was all but destroyed, and both families and their livestock were faced with the onset of a harsh northern winter without food nor heat. Nor was there sufficient corn to seed a crop in the spring of 1817. Northern newspapers, alarmed at the potential disaster widespread hunger would bring to New England, argued against the sale of corn and other grains harvested to European markets. At the same time, crop failures in France and across Europe made the sale of American grain to Europe highly lucrative for exporters. In both Europe and the United States, the situation was ripe for riots over the distribution of the meager American output from the 1816 growing season. Throughout both continents, the food riots came.