Freed Slave Writes Letter to Former Master: You Owe Us $11,680 for 52 Years of Unpaid Labor (1865)

Discussion in 'Race Relations' started by Cigar, Jan 10, 2018.

  1. Cigar

    Cigar Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    After the Civil War, a plantation owner - Colonel Anderson- pleaded for his freed slave to return to help bring in the crop. Financial ruin lay ahead if the fields weren't harvested. Below is the letter Jordan Anderson wrote back from his home in Ohio to his former master:

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    Colonel Anderson, having failed to attract his former slaves back, sold the land for a pittance to try to get out of debt. Two years later he was dead at the age of 44. Prior to 2006, historian Raymond Winbush tracked down the living relatives of the Colonel in Big Spring, reporting that they "are still angry at Jordan for not coming back," knowing that the plantation was in serious disrepair after the war.

    The Letter is Priceless ... and far kinder than I would have been ...

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    Dayton, Ohio,

    August 7, 1865

    To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

    Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. 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. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

    I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

    As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. 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. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

    In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

    Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

    From your old servant,

    Jourdon Anderson.

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    http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/...-11680-for-52-years-of-unpaid-labor-1865.html
     
  2. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Sounds a lot like farmers today complaining their crops will rot in the field if they don't have cheap migrant laborers to harvest them.
     
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  3. DoctorWho

    DoctorWho Well-Known Member

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    Tomatoes might cost you way more than they do now.
     
  4. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The price of cotton went up after slavery ended too.

    update: I just looked it up, actually the price of cotton was the same in 1876 as it was in 1860, interesting.

    price of cotton before the start of the Civil War in 1860 was 10 cents a pound.
    http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/291/cotton-and-the-civil-war

    price of cotton in 1876 was 9.7 cents per pound.
    http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=33770

    The burden of not having slaves then probably fell entirely on the producers then, and not the consumer.
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2018
  5. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Tha is incredible Cigar.....never seen anything like it. Probably would have been more common if many more slaves had been literate.
     
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  6. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A lot of farmers get government subsidies. My family farms really big and not far from Dayton Ohio. They do not use cheap migrant workers and their tradition goes back before the Civil War. Free men, free soil, free labor. Some white men still know how to work.
     
  7. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So all the claims that it was illegal to educate slaves is all just a lie. That letter is more correctly written including punctuation and grammar than the writing skills of over half the members of the forum.

    Accordingly, in my opinion the letter is a fake or what written by someone else.
     

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