I read this yesterday. The irony the former slave captured in the letter had me smiling.
Conveniently released during an election to stir up the reparations, I mean revenge, feelings.
He wrote better than a lot of educated professionals do today.
Love it! I have read a lot of the dictated and written stories of former slaves in the library of Congress, and there were many by men and women just as sharp, knowledgable and ironic. It must have been so difficult to be in that newly freed generation, the bitterness, the freedom, the social strata...
Priceless!
I thought the letter was very clever. I doubt its authenticity, though. Just an opinion.
The English and writing style makes no sense. I am suspect.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
Great letter! Mr. Anderson sounds like a newly minted Republican voter.
The average slave in the 1860’s could not read nor write. They developed a pidgeon english way of speaking so the white masters could not understand what they were saying. They certainly never spoke like this letter. Perhaps whoever was doing the writing simply put Jourden Anderson’s message in more educated words.
No matter who actually set pen to paper the letter is masterful in its irony as the author expresses a charitable lack of bitterness but a deep distrust of the new found concern of the former master.
The former slave asks for what is freely offered now to be recognized as justly earned but not paid in the past as a measure of the sincerity of the ex-master.
Perhaps the Colonel was in a clumsily and roundabout way asking for forgiveness and Jourdon was explaining how difficult that would be for each of them.
It’s fake.
It might be an old fake, but it is a fake all the same.
This was not written - or dictated - by anyone who had been a slave their whole life until just before the letter was written.
It was written as satire by a Caucasian abolitionist.
Looks like a lawyer was involved. He asks that his back wages be sent to one. That’s who probably transcribed it.