Jourdon Anderson Writes His Former Enslaver,
Black Americans hoped that the end of the Civil War would create an entirely new world, while white southerners tried to restore the antebellum order as much as they could. Most former enslavers sought to maintain control over their laborers through sharecropping contracts. P.H. Anderson of Tennessee was one such former enslaver. After the war, he contacted his former enslaved laborer Jourdon Anderson, offering him a job opportunity. The following is Jourdon Anderson’s reply.
Dayton, Ohio, August 7,
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 h
The Union Army in seized the Big Spring, Tennessee plantation where a slave named Jourdan worked. Upon being set free he moved to Dayton, Ohio with his wife and children.
Shortly after the Civil War ended Jourdan was begged to return to the Tennessee plantation by the man who had kept him a slave (Colonel Patrick Henry Anderson). Allegedly business was ailing and couldn&#;t continue without Jourdan doing the work.
The reply Jourdan sent to Anderson went into a newspaper and was widely reprinted. He passed away more than four decades later in , aged 81, never having returned to the plantation.
Here&#;s another, which removed the final paragraphs that diplomatically mentioned the common practice of white men raping the black daughters of their slaves
[Written just as he dictated it]
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7,
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 Re
.
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