A recently-unearthed 1865 letter from a former slave to his old Tennessee master fires a few devastating shots at the man who once did the same to him.
The letter, currently going viral on the Internet, was dicatated in 1865 by freed slave Jourdan Anderson to Col. P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tenn.
The colonel wrote his ex-slave in Ohio with an invitation to return and take a job on his farm — an offer the ex-slave quickly (and cleverly) rejected.
“I have often felt uneasy about you,” the letter begins. “I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house.
“Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living.”
The slave says his wife, Mandy, wants a show of good faith before they would leave Ohio for Tennessee: Back pay for their 52 years of combined service.
“If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future,” he wrote. “We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense.”
Jourdan Anderson closed his letter with a request for his old master to pass along regards to a mutual friend.
“Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me,” the freed slave wrote.
The missive was featured on the web site Lettersofnote.com, and was originally published in newspapers around the time that the letter was sent.
