http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html

Heady stuff.

I saw this a few days ago. Just wow.

Love the Ohio connection. When you hear me say, Go Buckeye's, It's short for F'ally'all.

Good on ya Jourdon!

There's a 'screw you' that's so well-written, you wanna cheer.

I'm guessing he didn't send the money. Writing that must have meant more to him than any amount of money.

Loved it until it got to the "back wages" portion. Bit unrealistic to expect that, I would imagine.

(I guess it bothered me because it sounds like too much like the modern day "reparations" talk, just another reason for "redistributing the wealth." I understand that blacks did not have the chance, for the most part, to accumulate family wealth during that, and subsequent times, like white people did, but at the same time, neither I, nor any of my family, ever owned slaves. And for that matter, we never benefited from, nor endorsed or promoted, any of the Jim Crow statutes. So any talk of "reparations" just gets my dander up.

And this seems like a website that would be for pushing said reparations.)

Amazing. An eloquent attempt to enlighten the unenlightenable.

I hope this man went on to have a life so good that it helped make up at least a little for all those tragic years of injustice and inhumanity.

Cheers!

Rick...

Reparations? I honestly didn't get that from reading the letter several times through. I think it was more a case of Anderson putting an ironic monetary value of the years that he'd worked for his former master, especially taken in context with him contrasting his work conditions in Ohio.

The letter is from 1865, so it isn't really relevant to latter-day talk of reparations...

+1!