Letter from an Ex-Slave to His Former Master

Neat, in a sad way.

This has the same feel to it as a newspaper editorial or an Urban Legends email, and it seems a bit staged. Even so, and even if it’s merely an editorial, it serves as an interesting look at slavery from a historical perspective.

I wonder if Snopes has checked this out. It reads like the Chief Seattle speech.

I don’t buy it. The reason isn’t because I don’t think that Slavery in many cases was horrible and Southern plantation owners exploitative. But it hits too many notes and contradicts reality: the girls, the absurdity of a guy so mean he tried to kill his apparently good slave and now pitifully in need of him; plantation owner, a Colonel no less, begging for his slave to come back home and work because he can’t survive without him. And that in the wake of the civil war where some half of all white males were killed, and then the rape and abuse of the population by Union soldiers. Typical Southern plantation owner would surely prefer putting a bullet in his own head than pleading for his slave to come back. And emancipation didn’t end exploitation and it certainly did not suddenly place American blacks in the middle class. And the other side is that Jourdon has gone up north and everything is fine. Yankees are just as happy as peaches to have him up there. Give him a great job in a hospital, addressing his wife and children with respect. There’s something very wrong with that picture. And the fact that it was reprinted in Northern newspapers in the wake of the war suggests to me what’s wrong.