5 Fascinating Historical Letters The World Needs to See

4) Letter from a Former Slave

Once freed from slavery in 1864, Jordan Anderson and his family headed North and made friends among abolitionists. For the first time in his life Anderson was earning money, $25 a week. Less than 2 years later, in a panic to save his plantation, Jordan’s former master wrote a letter asking his servant to come back.

Anderson was enslaved by Colonel Paulding H. Anderson for 32 long years in Big Spring, Tennessee. As Jordan left his former master attempted to shoot him twice before a neighbor intervened. Jordan was warned off the property by the Colonel for “deserting” him. In 1865 the Colonel wrote to Jordan with the nerve to ask him to return to the plantation! That letter from the Colonel has been lost, but fortunately we still have Jordan’s response.

As an illiterate former slave, Jordan asked his employer, Valentine Winters, to transcribe a thoughtful letter back to the Colonel. The document is one of the few recorded instances of a former enslaved person publicly criticizing slavery, in no small part because to do so openly would have had disastrous consequences in many areas.

Jordan’s unusual letter appeared in 1865 in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper under the title “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master” after Winters, a staunch abolitionist, shared it with the publication.

From Jordan’s response: “I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing…and the children — Milly, Jane, and Grundy — go to school and are learning well…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.” Jordan further states that the promise of wages might entice him and his wife to “forgive and forget old scores.”

Jordan also asks the Colonel to thank the neighbor for saving his life. Talk about taking the high road! Read the full transcript of the letter here.

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