Powerful words, no?
I'm pretty convinced that the Anderson letter is real. We know that Anderson existed. We know that the letter was, in fact, printed at the time. If someone is going to charge fraud they need to have something besides, "No slave could have written this."
That said, I'm interested in a discussion of the exact message of the letter. Better put, I'm interested in a discussion of interpretations. Most people read the letter as a sarcastic dis of Anderson's former master. There is that, but I wonder whether folks think his words of affection were more sarcasm, or sincere? I think it's reasonable to say that the part about the wages was sincere, especially given how he follows it up with hints of divine judgment and also his worrying about the safety of his daughters.
But I've found, in my reading, that the relationships between slaves and masters is often uncomfortably complicated. In numerous cases I've read about whites presuming the loyalty of their slaves, in much the way a parent would presume the loyalty of a child. In most cases, the loyalty is unfounded. But even in those cases, there is sometimes affection for the master, and in truly rare cases a kind of, almost, paternalism exhibited by the slave toward the master.
Throughout my reading, I've been thumbing through Remembering Slavery, a collection of oral histories taken by the WPA of freed slaves. The complexity of their lives and, for our purposes, their relationships with their owners is stunning. There are tales of master's giving slaves guns to go hunting. (I read that and thought, that's a hell of a chance this guy is taking) There are tales of masters and slaves celebrating Christmas together. (I think I read about that one in A Nation Under Our Feet. Forgive me, this stuff is starting to blur together. In a good way.)
The most interesting story I've seen involved a slaveowner who heads off to the Confederate front. The owner hands one of his slave a rifle, and says "Protect my wife, my daughters and my land" or some such. And the dude does it. He doesn't cut and run, he watches over his master's place. There's a way of reading this with the old house/field slave dichotomy. I love Malcolm. And I love that riff. By I don't think it says much about actual people.
Perhaps Old Jourdan is running game again. I don't know. But I would not put it beyond the realm of disbelief that he had some affection, if not for the old Colonel, then for the Colonel's family.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
It's some strange phenomenon of the internet that whenever any extraordinary, or sometimes even mundane, thing is posted, there's at least one person there to shout out "Fake!" with utter conviction despite any lack of proof or damning reasoning.
Maybe it's because so many things in the internet are indeed fake. But honestly, in cases like this people should realize that the outliers are usually unbelievable, and that life creates bizarre situations and peoples all the time. People shouldn't have an unshakable faith in deduction. It creates blindspots.
Honestly, I think some of it is flat-out racism and ignorance of history. The racism is that no slave could be that literate/smart/awesome. The ignorance is thinking that no slave owner would do something so stupid and arrogant as to write a former slave asking him to come back.
For what it's worth, the "hoax" thought did pop into my head. But given that the source was a noted historian, it quickly vanished. I think people's need to hold on to the hoax idea--with no real evidenec--does say a lot though. It's a kind of fake skepticism.
I wondered too at first, but like you said, there's plenty of evidence behind it-- probably more than some things we take for granted.
There is a long history of questioning the literacy/intelligence of slave writings/narratives. Let us not forget that when "The Autobiography of Fredrick Douglass" was published it 1883, there was a loud public outcry that it could not possibly have been written by an ex-slave; that it had to be a hoax.
Honestly, though, I think there's a lot of room between "completely authentic single author" and "hoax or fraud". The fact that the letter was published immediately, that it was listed as dictated by rather than written by (does that mean he couldn't write?), and that it was published in Cincinnatti where it was written rather than Tennessee where it was (presumably) sent, all point to at least the hand of an editor. Also, given all that, it seems very likely to be at the least something written to be a publicly published rather than a private letter that happened to find its way into the journals of the time, and should be read and interpreted in that light.
I find that the question of authenticity is one of the least interesting aspects of the Anderson letter, but overactive skepticism is the nature of the Internet. Racism is always there to be sure, but I don't think it's playing such a major role here.
Right. But it's worth noting that in the 19th century there was an entire industry of letter-writers. I just talked to a historian buddy who noted that the master likely dictated his letter also. Moreover, Frederick Douglass's Slave Narrative likely had an editor--as do most memoirs? But what does that really tell us?
It's true that the letter wasn't found in a personal journal, and that it appeared in a paper--but no one's ever presented it that way. So I'm not sure what that tells us. Again, even noting that there may have been some editing doesn't tell us much, as people used filters for their letters all the time in the 19th century.
I'd be very interested in who actually wrote the war letters of all those Civil War general.
Skepticism is the cornerstone of thought when discerning between history, hoak, and fiction, I think. Even today we have to ask if a photo has been altered, for example, as well as remember, as one of Joyce Carol Oates' characters says, "Photography always lies."
But back to writing ...
The issue of authentication is dealt with nicely in Hannah Crafts/Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s The Bondswoman's Narrative. I highly recommend it.
From Amazon.com Review:
Few events are more thrilling than the discovery of a buried treasure. Some years ago, when scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was leafing through an auction catalog, he noticed a listing for an unpublished, clothbound manuscript thought to date from the 1850s: "The Bondwoman's Narrative, by Hannah Crafts, a Fugitive Slave, Recently Escaped from North Carolina." Gates realized that, if genuine, this would be the first novel known to have been written by a black woman in America, as well as the only one by a fugitive slave. He bought the manuscript (there was no competing bid) and began the exhilarating task of confirming the racial identity of the author and the approximate date of composition (circa 1855-59). Gates's excited descriptions of his detective work in the introduction to The Bondwoman's Narrative will make you want to find promising old manuscripts of your own. He also proposes a couple candidates for authorship, assuming that Hannah Crafts was the real or assumed name of the author, and not solely a pen name.
I sent this to my wife, who's putting it in her American Literature class to complement Frederick Douglas. I also suggested she check into whether it was real, for two reasons:
1) The internet. Have to be careful, always.
2) It's perfect. Moving, biting, funny, painful, horrific, and everything else. It's hard not to be a little suspicious of perfection.
That said, for me all that matters is that it was written at the time, which it apparently was. Whoever spoke and/or wrote this seems to have a deep understanding of what it was like to be a freed slave reflecting on his captivity and the idea of returning (to the extent that I can assess that). That alone serves the educational purpose.
Real affection? Sure. The mastery of slaves had to be psychological in some large measure. They weren't being kept in prisons after all. They outnumbered their masters and so the relationship between master and slave often must have had to have been a psychologically codependent one.
And I'm sure there was always an aspect of 'it could have been worse.' In Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson the characters are always in terror of being 'sold down the river,' where conditions were held to be much worse. If an owner treated you with a certain amount of kindness and respect-- especially if the guy next door didn't-- you could well hold some respect for him.
And the daughters, of course, would have probably been considered innocents in all this. One of the standoutlines in Anderson's letter is about his concern for his own daughters; I think they probably would have had a level of worry about what would happen to all the girls with a bunch of Yankee soldiers on the loose.
I don't think Yankee soldiers on the loose was Anderson's only concern: in his letter, he specifically mentions the liberties that the Young Masters had taken with two other young ladies.
Oh, I don't think it was Anderson's concern at all, especially in that letter-- I just want to point out that white men raping women was probably a pretty common concern for black people in the South.
Like an early version of Stockholm Syndrome.
"The owner hands one of his slave a rifle, and says "Protect my wife, my daughters and my land" or some such. And the dude does it. He doesn't cut and run, he watches over his master's place."
Examples like this are what make the post-Slavery lynching sprees ridiculous and obviously a form of social control and intimidation. If the slaves were so out of control, violent and sexually voracious for white women in 1876 than why wasn't that a concern in 1863? A little off topic but fascinating, on the question of lynchings, social control and the post slavery life, I recommend reading Historian Peter Linebaugh's brilliant essay, "Gruesome Gertie and the Buckle of the Bible Belt."
I find it fairly offensive that the sole argument against the letter being genuine seems to be, "No way a slave could have written it." I guess a slave couldn't be that...articulate?
There is great humor in the letter, but there is also great pain. Jourdan's concern for his daughters--and his reminder of what happened to two other girls--seems like an extraneous detail for something written solely for humorous or even ideological effect.
Jourdan notes that he would have been worth $25/month, but his wife Mandy (er, Mrs Anderson) only $2 a week. I found myself wondering why that was...perhaps Jourdan wasn't necessarily a field hand. Although I don't know why that would necessarily disqualify him either (I'm thinking solely of literacy, not intelligence).
It reminds me of the arguments that Shakespeare couldn't possibly have written his own plays, because he didn't have an Oxbridge education. Must have been an aristocrat, using Shakespeare as a front! As if only the traditionally educated could have that world of imagination and creativity within them.
I would imagine that a wise African-American slave, with the richness of his experience, would more often than not have what it takes to write such a letter than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
Ahem.
I suspect there's also the long-held belief that men's labor cost/is worth more than women's there, too.
Absolutely, Persia! I was thinking that as well--but forgot to include it. Thanks!
As far the eloquence and wit, we tend to forget that in mid-19th century America just about everyone - white and black - were rasied on the cadences and language of the King James bible and even Shakespeare. Anyone who watched the Ken Burns Civil War documentary was amazed by the beautiful letters home written by country raised soldiers. In the slave South, black preachers were admired, often even by whites, for their sermons. There may have been some editing by the transcriber, but there is nothing surprising at all by a recently freed slave, like Anderson, having the abilty to compose such a powerful letter.
Exactly... I made this point in the other thread about this letter, but you made it much more eloquently.
hey T, it's not a perfect analogy but I have worked with a lot of people who are struggling to come to terms with abusive and controlling relationships especially with family/home-life and it's hard to underestimate the power of human emotions/involvement, it seems illogical that one could have love and even to have some degree of respect/admiration for one's abuser but it happens all the time, the philosopher Hegel wrote about the master/slave relationship where the slave takes on the values of the master but in family life this goes deeper in that our emotional bonds don't respect logic, also this was all the life that many slaves new/expected so they adapted to it until something else became possible but old habits die hard, as for the letter I think that it is impossible to get at the writer/editor's intent but as far the period goes one would expect to see more in the way of manners/formality than sarcasm.
Not knowing anything about the history of this letter, and relying on my own limited knowledge of the time, as I read the letter I have to admit that I was duped. The whole time I was reading the letter, I am saying to myself, "No Jourdan! What the hell are you doing, stay in Ohio for god sakes". Then I got to the part about his recompense, with interest no doubt(what a coldblooded move) minus the medical expense of course. But it was the post script that sealed the deal for me, clearly this was cathardic letter for Jourdan. A cunning, scalpel like message to a former master steeped in "look at me now" bravado. I would have loved to have seen the steam rise from his old master's ears as he reached the end of this letter...powerful indeed.
Yeah, I think if you had just read the portion that TNC hightlighted yesterday, you could be lead to believe that he was actually considering it...
There's definitely something to the idea that slaves had more complicated feelings towards their masters than simple hatred and fear--after all, in many parts of the antebellum south the slaves vastly outnumbered the whites and physically could have overpowered them. But I suspect something about being born into slavery and socialized by it affected the slave psychologically in such a way as to leave him/her with mixed feelings about the master. (Not to mention "house slaves" being played against "field slaves" and such) I think this had as much to do with the difficult adjustment to post-Civil War life as the reaction by angry whites to their freedom.
I think we can compare "loyalty" of some slaves to victims of child abuse. The truth is, it isn't loyalty, but rather fear that drives that type of behavior. And yes, that fear may be irrational (especially while armed) but in both cases, it's deeply instilled. That's not to say it's always paralyzing; certainly both abused children and slaves can rebel.
I should mention that I'm not comparing the mental facilities of children to slaves. I just think the institutionalized fear is present in both cases, and I'd say very strongly present in a slaves childhood. Unfortunately, it's normal when one is raised that way.
And yes, that fear may be irrational (especially while armed) but in both cases, it's deeply instilled.
Of course they were right to be afraid and I don't think that having a gun temporarily should have reasonably obviated that fear. I think most slaves would have been quite well aware that fighting back would be likely to end badly for them even if they had some temporary victory.
Well true, but I'm talking more about the 1 on 1 relationship more than the entire context. Logically, it was dangerous. Emotionally, though, it was paralyzing.
Doesn't the non-use of the gun testify to the strength of social and cultural power? What is one gun against a whole world aligned to keep you in "your" place?
I think isolation plays a role in both cases. If your view of the world doesn't extend past the fields of the plantation (or the walls of a house), anything unfamiliar is scary. That was one reason for keeping slaves illiterate, so it would be harder to learn about anything the master didn't want them to.
And if the oppressor/abuser does pretend to care about you when not actively abusing you, wouldn't that make it even worse? If Dad loves me and treats me like this, just imagine what someone who DIDN'T love me would be like!
TNC,
The Christmas story you're thinking of is from "Nation Under Our Feet," though it is a bit more complex than that. The celebration of Christmas was not so much of a kumbya moment for enslaved people, but more a way for them to exercise their political will and demand certain concessions (read gifts) from the owners.
This became a bit more problematic after emancipation when blacks would demand Christmas gifts from the people they sharecropped for as they tried to adjust to the capitalist economy.
Just a side note though, wasn't Hahn's discussion of rumors as a way to exercise political will incredible? It always amazes me that no matter how beat down a person is s/he will find some way to take some sort of control (what historians call agency) over her/his situation. That's what's so incredible to me about "Nation Under Our Feet."
Thanks for clarifying. And yeah, the whole theme running through that book is this idea of consistently, in the worst possible circumstances, asserting your humanity. Hayden touches on this in Middle Passage. He calls it the "deep immortal human wish\the timeless will." Not by coincidence, this comes right after a section on Cinque's rebellion. It's about the constant need to assert freedom.
I read a great book on this whole subject- "weapons of the weak"- James Scott. It points out that traits often derided in the poor are their meager means of power. Procrastination, malingering, playing dumb, anonymous sabotage, stubborn resistance to change- these are ways of preserving your tiny resources. And they correlate with widely held stereotypes of downtrodden people all around the world.
Is it possible to say that his literacy and articulateness is further evidence of a strong interpersonal relationship between the two? Not for nothing, but many slaves were kept illiterate by their masters for reasons of disempowerment. House negroes gained some education, and in this case, Anderson sounds like he may have been a secretary or man of the house, privy to the working business and legal details of running a plantation. Becoming completely literate in the course of one year is pretty close to impossible for any man. The bond may come from this sharing of a common purpose, and may explain in part the Colonel's desire to see Jourdain return.
I'm not saying this to say "Well, the white man gave him something, anyway." Just that literacy is something that needs to be nurtured.
"Becoming completely literate in the course of one year is pretty close to impossible for any man."
Totally not true. Paolo Freire famously, taught illiterate people to read in 6 weeks. The Nicaraguan literacy campaign of 1980 brought the country's literacy rate up by 38% in six months.
I'd sign on to the idea that it's extremely unlikely that a main gain literacy in a year if nothing else in his world or his self-concept has changed. That was not the case with Anderson. Literacy can be powerfully and rapidly nurtured by emancipation, literal and metaphorical
What really struck me about the letter is that, with all the stuff Jourdon was carrying around inside himself about his former master, he still called himself Jourdon Anderson. He kept the old master's last name.
There's something heartbreaking yet eloquent about that. The issues of identity, continuity and ambiguity. But that's of course part of what was wrong about slavery, isn't it?
When you've been known to everyone, including yourself, as Jourdan Anderson for over thirty years, it's not an easy thing to change. Our names are a very deep part of our own personal identity, and it takes a lot for us to change it and believe it.
I can easily imagine slaves with personal responsibility for their masters' families -- nannies, valets and so on -- having some real affection for the people who owned them. And for the affection to go the other way, too. It's harder to imagine the further away you get... kitchen staff would be further away than personal attendants, and agricultural laborers furthest of all.
And even for personal attendants, I'm sure affection depended on good treatment. Being a nanny can be a pretty attractive job, but it's horrible even today if the employer doesn't treat employees well. And slaves didn't have the option of finding other jobs if their owners happened to be the bad sort.
I have also read that some slavery was, well, not as complete as we usually think of it. A blacksmith or other skilled worker might work for wages for lots of customers, but his owner would then have a claim on some of his earnings. People in that relationship would also probably have different relationships than people in a relationship where one commands the other directly.
Going only on my knowledge of human nature, it seems likely that at least some slaves were treated, by at least some slaveowners, more or less like family members. By analogy, today, there are many factory farms where the livestock is treated atrociously, and there are some farms where the animals are basically family pets. (Excuse the people/livestock analogy, but you get my point). I imagine the difference would be even more pronounced when you are dealing with actual human beings. At a minimum, I'd be willing to bet that slaves were generally treated pretty well as little children- even pretty terrible people still like babies.
There was also a category of slaves who were basically playmates for the master's children. Eventually they'd be reassigned, though probably to house duties. I'd imagine such relationships might have engendered real affection.
Just to bring it into modern times, there's this whole stream of writing and movies wherein someone with power becomes "friends" with their servant, whether movie star and assistant or golfer and magic negro caddy. The stories are always told from the perspective of power, "so and so is my rock, so sensible, so connected, keeps me grounded, a real friend." You never see this from the perspective of the servant, how they feel about keeping whosit connected and grounded.
Given that a number of those slave children were quite likely half-siblings of the master's children, I'm not surprised that they'd be playmates for a while.
Just because an entire institution is set up to dehumanize you doesn't actually mean that you stop being human. It doesn't prevent you from noticing things, from knowing things. Especially someone you live with every day: Their heartbreaks and their little prides, the trifles they care for beyond reason, the little irritations that get right under their skin, their talents and ambitions, their flaws and their failures. Plenty of times these were people who grew up together, knew each other inside and out...you may hate them for the power they have over you, for their condescension and carelessness, and still feel bad to see them hurt, in some ways.
nicely put.
I think the letter is sincere, yet aware. I think Jourdan is laying it out for the old boy, in full expectation of getting nothing. I believe this is the difference between sarcasm and irony?
Humans are complicated.
I agree. The letter appearing in an Ohio paper makes it evident that this was composed for a wider audience, which works with the style--this is a polemic for a broad audience couched in a single story of one slave family and their owners. (One would hardly expect the southern recipient to cherish the letter and save it for posterity, or to publish it in a fit of shame.) There's no reason to think it was not written or dictated by Mr. Anderson unless you're one of those "and Shakespeare couldn't have been Shakespeare; he must have been an Earl at the very least" types.
I know much more about Russian serfdom than about American slavery -- amazing to think that the phenomena were contemporary of each other! -- and though, of course, there are more differences than similarities, the complex relationship between master and slave must be common to both forms of servitude.
Many Russian serfs -- especially those that served in their master's houses as nannies, cooks, waiters, or otherwise came into close daily contact with their masters -- felt great affection for their them, worried about them when they were ill, felt pride in their childrens' accomplishments, and in general saw themselves and their masters as part of the same fabric of daily and communal life. The relationship was (sometimes, to some extent) reciprocated.
It can't be a coincidence that in both cases, Christianity was used to justify slave-owning as an orderly, hierarchical relationship that was proper and blessed by God. Russian serfs (and black slaves in America) were a deeply Christian and religious people, and this kind of conditioning, drummed into them generation after generation, no doubt had long-lasting psychological effects.
As in the United States, many Russian serfs continued to work for their former masters after emancipation. Though they were nominally paid, their lot did not really improve much for many years... another interesting, though depressing parallel.
As usual TNC, a brilliant post that explores the deeper layers of meaning behind historical cant and "fact". One thing that made me a little uncomfortable about the letter is how certain parts of it (affection for master and family) was and could be used by certain people to cliam that slavery was good for the slaves.
Like a poster above. I thought stockholm syndrome as well. And like another poster I agree that being born into and indoctrinated with the relities of slavery may have contributed to the lack of rebellion.
I would take it further. I think we can look at slave societies of even older vintage and see many of the same dynamics at work. Rome was built and served by a huge number of slaves. Minus Sparticus this system hummed along just fine for the better part of 700 years.
In ancient societies (in Latin America, The Jews in Babylon and Egypt, Africa/Barbary Coast - during wartime meeant you were bound to become a slave.
Miguel Cervantes was a slave to the Barbary pirates for a stretch.
In almost all cases the system worked as long as that society was fucntioning "properly". Dying only when that culture or society died.
Curious.
"The Hemmings of Monticello: An American Family," by Annette Gordon-Reed, is a great book that details the inter-connected family dynamics and emotional relationships that often existed between slave and master. The Enigmatic Jefferson, on his remote mountaintop, created a world where the the Hemmings (the slave family) and the Jeffersons (the slave owners) were connected not only by blood ties (Sally Hemmings was Jefferson's deceased wife's half-sister, of course; and Jefferson fathered children with Sally.), but also by deep and abiding ties of affection, of love, even of hatred (Martha Jefferson Randolph, Jefferson's white daughter, harbored feelings of resentment and hatred towards Sally and her offspring.)
Gordon-Reed explains in the book that the Hemmings and Jeffersons shared holidays and other special events together -- just like one big family. The birth of a Hemmings was celebrated in the same manner as the birth of a Jefferson, for instance. The two family were so mixed up that you often could not tell a Hemmings from a Jefferson because most of the Hemmings' looked as white as their Jefferson kin.
In reading the book, Jefferson, for his part, revealed true feelings of affection -- and love -- for his favorite slaves; he would be genuinely hurt when one of his slaves asked for their freedom (James, Sally's brother, is a great example) -- or escaped. In his mind, Monticello was one great family and he, the patriach, could not imagine why anyone would want to leave it, or him?
It really boogles the mind when you think about it. In his paternalistic world-view, Jefferson really believed that a slave would actually prefer the life at Monticello over their own freedom.
The affection could have been real. Like you say, it was complicated. The slave may have felt that his master treated him well, relative to other slave masters, but even the status of the best-treated slave wouldn't look so appealing to a successful free man who is now getting paid for his work and in charge of his destiny.
Have you done any comparative study of slavery in the U.S. versus, say, in the Caribbean or Latin America? My guess is that you'd find more complex relationships between slaves and slave masters in the U.S., because slaves here more frequently survived to have children, so families of slaves and slave masters had multi-generational histories together, whereas my understanding is that those on sugarcane plantations were more likely to be worked to death young and replaced by newly imported slaves. I could be wrong though.
Nerd that I am, I wrote a paper in law school comparing slavery in the US to slavery in the french caribbean. I can't speak for the rest of the Carribean, but all else aside, the french caribbean slaves had it much better both legally and in fact than slaves in the US for several reasons. By a weird twist of history, the french law on slavery was based on roman law. Roman slaves, who were often from the same ethnic/ cultural background as their masters, could buy their own freedom, marry their masters, marry each other, etc. So in the French caribbean, the relationship between slaves and slaveowners was much more egalitarian. Second, France abolished slavery in 1794. Finally, there wasn't the institutionalized racism, and people accepted their black kids, so you wound up with some wealthy, openly mixed race families. Again, the non-french islands may have been a different story.
FWIW, the 1870 census shows Jordan Anderson (45?), wife Amanda (39), Jane (19), Felix (12), William (5), Andrew (1), and mother-in-law Percella McGregor (69) living in Dayton. Jordan is a hostler and can neither read nor write, Amanda keeps house and can read, the oldest 3 kids are attending school, the neighbors are white immigrants from Germany and France. So someone read the Colonel's letter to Jordan, and possibly suggested writing a reply. I've no problem assuming the content was from Jordan, but whether the tone is entirely his, I'm dubious. (Even today, we get arguments over whether a novel translated from one language to another is faithful to the original.) Certainly makes for an interesting discussion, though.
But why? Again, as I wrote above, this could be true for anyone else who used someone else to write for them. Are you saying that the inability to read or write robs one of sarcasm or irony? What evidence do you have that would show that the tone wasn't his?
You're right, on tone. I can't prove everything in the letter, either substance or tone, comes from Jourdan. Nor can I prove it didn't. So I'm left with a residual skepticism at something which might be a tad too perfect. Then again, perfection sometimes happens. :-)
I think the word we're looking for here is "intimacy", more than "affection." These were like some sort of twisted families - in some cases the bloodlines were real - where everyone knows each other very well. Sometimes there might be genuine affection of a sort - even for a "master" or some of the master's family, but affection doesn't preclude a large dose of mistrust, disgust or even contempt. In truth, many slaves obviously knew their masters better than the masters knew them.
There was a lot of presumption involved in the very existence of the institution, and we see this run amok in some of these anecdotes of masters tasking their slaves with stuff like protecting the farm and family. On the other side, it's conditioned by the fact that this was the life most slaves knew - the only life. So day-by-day one tends to buy in to "reality" at some level just to get through the shit. All of this is also complicated by the liklihood that the spectrum of how "masters" interacted on a personal or even "overseer" level with their slaves varied and those who appeared relatively humane compared to others probably got cut some slack in the slave's POV (and I'm sure stories of "bad masters" down the road bore a lot of weight in subtley or not-so-subtley controlling expectations and behavior of slaves.)
People are complicated and can be very weird, long-term relationships can get even more weird and complex. But I'd look at "intimacy" as explaining these weird, layered interactions that aren't easy to explain from our POV as outside observers who want to overlay deep shit with rational expectations. Knowing someone really well and having a long history with them - no matter how "inexcusable" their behavior - generally tempers or complicates how one deals with them.
I think y'all are overlooking a very obvious reason for both Anderson having the last name he did and the strange often affectionate ties slaves and masters felt to each other.
Anderson may very well have been an Anderson, not just taking his master's last name in order to have one, but taking his own family name. He may have felt some fondness towards the white Anderson because he knew he was family.
When you start reading civil war era diaries, it becomes blatantly obvious that everyone knew that many masters were holding their own family members in bondage (or the family members of other white men).
I think this is one reason white on black racism remains so pernicious and ugly (and I have a theory it's one of the reasons the South remains so screwed up in many ways)--because we white people HAVE to believe that this is something we did to folks WHO WERE NOT US.
Believing that your great-great-great grandfather kept slaves not because he was evil, but just because that's how folks did things back then and anyway it's not like black people are really people has got to be a lot easier to handle psychologically than knowing that your great-great-great grandfather knowingly submitted his own family members to that ugliness.
But it's the truth. Slavery was something white people did to Africans at first, but it didn't take it very long to become something white men did to their own children (though, obviously not exclusively or in all situations). And I think that once you understand that everyone both knew that (even if white people worked to keep that from outsiders), these weird dynamics don't seem so weird any more.
That's a really, really good point, and it goes along with what Storm said above about the Jeffersons and Hemings. The whole thing was just SO, SO unnatural and weird.
Here's an interesting experience of mine vis-a-vis miscegenation then and politics now:
Example 1: Female colleague. Politically conservative (life-long Republican). Born early 1960s Atlanta GA. She was a natural blonde, blue-eyed, with a typically northern European, fair-skinned appearance -- but tanned in the summer like a mofo from Sicily. When people were surprised she didn't sunburn horribly, she would smile and say: "Look, I'm from Georgia *and* I'm adopted; I don't know who my ancestors were -- but I'm from the Deep South, so I have a pretty good idea where all that tanning ability might have come from." She voted for Reagan and both Bushes .... and totally accepted the fact that she might be part Black.
Example 2: Ex-boyfriend. Politically left-wing (voted Nader in 2000) granola crunching vegetarian who hated his rural Virgina Southern Baptist upbringing and escaped north to the libruls and the Unitarian Chuch. Born mid-50s. Into genealogy and knew his family had been in the Carolinas from the mid-1700s. Couldn't believe that I burned and he tanned so well. I said: Well, sunburning is normal with my ethnic background (Scots and Irish). Here's the rest of the conversation:
Him: "That makes no sense, I'm 100% Anglo-Saxon too, with blue eyes and fair skin just like you."
Me: "Yes, but your family has been in the South for 200 years and my family sailed from Liverpool in 1892 -- you figure it out."
Him: "What are you saying? There's no black blood in our family; we didn't own slaves."
Me: "How do you know? Besides, how does not *owning* slaves automatically mean one of your ancestors didn't *sleep* with a slave?"
Him: "Well, I can tell you that I know my family's background and there was none of that going on."
Very amusing exchange. Also, what about the possibility that one of his relatives could have been a very fair-skinned slave who passed (or strolled as the slaves often called passing) into whiteness?
His grandparents never mentioned it, ergo it never happened.
Interesting on the tanning, being on the hyper-sunburning end of that spectrum myself. And yet despite ardent genealogists on both sides of my family, I can't make any claims that no one appearing on the trees 100 or 200 years ago wasn't strolling. I just got the Scots-Irish end of the gene pool; my sister tans easily and in her teens looked like she might be Native American.
I think a key issue is that in most every other society slavery was an economic/war thing. What I mean by that is one group beats another in a war and they make the survivors slaves, situation is reversed and the other group becomes the slaves, happened all the time amongst indians, tribes in Africa, Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Romans, etc. Or it was more of an indentured servitude type of thing.
In a twisted way Northern Europeans, which leads to the Southern slave holders in the US, thought they were more moral, they would never make a person a slave, blacks could be slaves because they were inferior. You admit that blacks aren't inferior and the whole system comes crashing down, you now have to admit you have been violating your own morality. I think this is why slavery on French islands in the Caribbean (or New Orleans for that matter) was different than in the British Caribbean or the rest of the South.
One of the things I think people really don't quite grok about the antebellum South is how tightly controlled the flow of information was. That was true for the white community also (losing control of Postmaster patronage was a major contributor to secession), but triply true for the slave community. Sure, rumors abounded, but people really didn't know what the world outside was like.
So in a very real way that I think is really hard to understand today, slavery was "normal". And so people built personal relationships with those around them. If we draw analogies to present day then the situation looks psychologically flawed, thus the comparisons above to Stockholm Syndrome and child abuse. And maybe it is, but if we draw comparisons to older times, we aren't particular surprised to find honest affection betweens serfs and feudal lords, or between house servants and Roman citizen households. There's a difference between "someone is oppressing me" and "life has placed me in an inferior position". And I think the latter was at least as common as the former.
One thing you get in the Anderson letter, or in the slave narratives, is the incredible impact of an almost immediate change in the definition of "normal". Suddenly, virtually everyone agrees that the way you were treated was immoral, that it's normal for people to keep their families together or get paid for their labor. That's one thing the Anderson letter brings out, the matter-of-fact discussion of things that really were matter-of-fact just a few years' previously but are now seen as monstrous.
I haven't read anything like the amount you have on this, but I think slave/master relationships just had a lot more depth and complexity than we're used to thinking about. In cold economic terms, you'd expect slavery to look like West Indies sugar plantations or Ottoman salt mines (aka, hell on earth, working slaves to death as a matter of course, brutality and terror and the constant threat of slave revolt) *everywhere*. And yet, I gather that most slavery wasn't like that. You have friendships and genuine caring between slaves and owners sometimes, trust and understanding between them, Christmas presents, the whole package. (And that includes the constant underlying threat of brutality, being sold down the river, etc.)
I think modern US culture has a really hard time with huge power imbalances between people. Where we have them (like in the military, or between police and people they're arresting), we tend to want (and maybe need) pretty elaborate, strict rules to avoid mistreatment. And yet, a lot of human history and culture hasn't had this notion, and I suspect that maybe slaveowners who weren't constantly horrible and brutal must have somehow been following some different pattern of behavior--one where people with power are expected to treat people in their power fairly, somehow. Obviously, that wasn't universal--slavery was full of brutality and mistreatment even away from the sugar and cotton plantations. But somehow, those relationships weren't always wrecked by the massive power imbalance.
TNC,
Not to assign you more reading, but have you ever looked at Walter Johnson's Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (1999)? I ask because one of Johnson's big points is how slavery, while clearly being underpinned and facilitated by the market, was often portrayed as being against the market/capitalism. That is, the imaginary relation between slave and slave-owner in some areas would be that the slave-owner is protecting the slave from the slave-trader. (This is post-1808, so, we're speaking purely of domestic trade.) It's an interesting book and very clearly written.
Second, have you ever read James Henry Hammond's letters/diaries? He's a pro-slavery Senator and Governor of South Carolina, so he may not give a really fair view of things in some ways, but he is clear on what he believes. (For instance, it's okay to replace one slave mistress with her 12-year old daughter.) Most relevant to this discussion is this one letter he wrote to his son on how his son should try to keep the family--white and black--together, and not sell away the slaves. As he puts it, "Slavery in the family will be their happiest earthly condition." (It's that "in the family" that gets me.)
Just curious, did he mean 'mistress' as 'lady who runs the house' or 'woman you're raping on a regular basis'?'
People can (and do) deceive themselves too. "I'm really doing it for their own good!:
The latter--although possibly the former as well: I suppose she could be a house-worker whom he forced to have sex. (I'm not remembering right now.)
(And while J H Hammond may seem a little cliche in that regard, I should add that he ran into political trouble when it became known that he had some molestation/relation with his 4 teenage nieces-in-law. The guy was a piece of work--I still love his self-pitying remark on what went wrong: "when it became necessary for God to aid me, He failed.")
The style is immensely familiar: sugar frosting with cyanide.
I don't see any hint of affection in it. Jourdan isn't even speaking to the Colonel, not really. He's showing his Mandy that he has the brains and discipline and talent to answer the stinking bastard with dry wit. He's strong enough NOT to kill the fool.
It's intensely Southern. It's utterly classic technique among white women I love and claim as kin. It's a solution to being stuck in situations where slicing someone's throat in a single stroke would be perfect justice but terrible strategy: you deploy words like ninja daggers, so sharp and so fast that some folks don't even realize it happened.
It's a humor honed where white-hot rage meets ice-cold will.
If someone who can write like that offers you a cupcake, think before you bite in.
I agree, I noticed that also--it seems like his wife is as much the audience for his letter as his master. His wife might have even helped him compose it. And as for the technique being intensely Southern, I agree. My late great-aunt (PBUH) had a gift for sarcasm so quick and biting, it wouldnt hit you until minutes or hours later that she had dissed the hell out of your foolish self.
Sometimes reading this blog and the comments is like being in a wonderful college seminar -- TNC, like a good professor, gives a challenging opening and the commenters are like grad students, taking it deeper. In fact, the conversation is a lot more substantive than in some of my graduate school courses. The past two days have been especially rich. I love the way issues that are usually so polarized are continually re-framed in a multitude of ways, each giving new food for thought. Thanks, all, for the learning opportunity.
When I got to the end of the letter and saw that it was published in Ohio, my first thought was that there probably was a letter from the Colonel, and then Jourdan either decided to write back and also send it to the newspaper, or maybe he had been talking about the letter and someone asked if they could print it. Perhaps he bounced some ideas around with people -- he mentions talking about it with his wife, so I imagine she was "in on the joke" too, and may have contributed. Perhaps there were others. Perhaps he did have someone write it down for him, and perhaps someone edited it. But that doesn't diminish it to me in any way. That is how things are created. Besides, if you compare the first published account of the "Ain't I A Woman" speech (in the Anti-Slavery Bugle), the one in "History of Woman Suffrage," and the now more common version, based on Gage but rewritten into standardized English, you can see how big a difference there can be in the presentation to a given audience without any real difference in the power of the underlying ideas.
The original letter from the Colonel does seem fantastic from our point of view today, but I could see a mind-set that could create it. We humans have a remarkable ability to only see what we want to believe, and even better ability to morph our memories. I'd guess that he never even thought that the "treatment" of the two other women mentioned would have any bearing on whether Jourdan would come back. To him, it probably didn't happen, or it wasn't really rape, or whatever ridiculousness he could come up with. But even more to the point -- if he thought of Jourdan as not being fully human -- would you think that a cow you owned would choose not to come back to you because another cow was slaughtered by your neighbor? If you can get your head into a place where you think it's okay to keep another human in the kind of slavery we had in the South, how big a leap is it to not realize they have as much sense, intelligence, insight and information as you do? Heck, we do that to a lesser degree with people in the "opposing camp" all the time today.
As to Jourdan's feelings... yes, I think they must have been complicated, or at least hard for us to understand from such a distance. People have mentioned Stockholm Syndrome and the dynamic of abusive relationships, which I'm sure were a part of it. But I also suspect there's something else, perhaps an undercurrent of Christian philosophy. He mentions that he goes to church, that his son may be a preacher... and he mentions a judgment "for those who defraud the laborer of his hire," so I don't think it's too far-fetched to think that he has done some thinking about his experiences in light of his faith. It feels to me like part of what is going on is an attempt at forgiveness of the person (not of what that person did), and rising above the desire for vengeance. Perhaps, like turning the other cheek, Jourdan (while pointing out the Colonel's hypocrisy) was telling him he would give him a chance to show that he'd changed, and that there could be a new relationship between them.
But then, I am sure I'm reading my own feelings into it all. I don't suppose I can ever really know what goes on in someone else's head -- I often have enough trouble honestly understanding what's going on in my own.
Thank you for linking to that letter. It really is a very different perspective from the various paradigms we usually have about slavery.
Oh, and in that light, "thank[ing] him for taking the pistol from you" becomes not just about Jourdan's life, or about another man protecting him, but about being able to say that he's glad that the Colonel isn't responsible for killing him -- that he was prevented from committing another abomination.
In a way, that letter felt kind of like a teaching moment -- rising above the fray to try to impart some perspective and wisdom.
A mildly related pick-me-up. The comedian Greg Giraldo has a great old bit comparing Civil War letters with Gulf War letters. Took me forever to find link. The whole bit is funny, but the war letters part is at the end, starting at 2:10. Enjoy.
http://comedians.comedycentral.com/greg-giraldo/videos/greg-giraldo---dumb-country
I didn't find the tone to be affectionate at all. It was quite scathing towards the end and the final line really hammered the bastard.
As for authorship, there is certainly a good chance that the writing of that letter was assisted by an attorney. Perhaps the V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio, to whom Jourdan directs the back wages to be sent.
I do think there is some degree of genuine affection. I grew up in a fairly hierarchical society, with the usual fine but materially irrelevant gradations. Like most other upper-middle class families, we had household help.
In some ways, it would have been unimaginable had there not been genuine affection. My nanny, who lived with us, did very hard work for what can only be described as uninspiring pay. This was a fairly large city, so the effect must have been amplified. But there is no question, whatsoever, that there was a genuine bond. When I got home every day after school, it was not the grudging call of duty that prompted my nanny to prepare snacks for me, but a certain maternity. I didn't order her about, and nor did my parents; when she did take responsibility for me, it was out of willing volition.
What is interesting, however, was that ours was not the universal case. I have known other families who had much frostier and contractual relations with their hired help. In most of those cases, the hired help came from the urban labour exchange. My family, however, found our nanny through a distant relative in the country, who lived in the same village.
I don't know how my experience is in any way applicable to the relationships of slaves; mine, after all, could not have been close in degree or nature. But I think it still does illustrate a certain truth about the intimacy, and the affection, that comes out of very close, very deep relationships that surely would have formed in self-contained plantations. Can you imagine what slavery without affection should have been like? Certainly, not a stable society, yet the South was fairly stable, to the extent possible in a slave society.
I don't know if anyone's read the children's novel The Wind in the Willows; but it is illustrative of the bonds, and the reciprocity of feeling, that fully existed in master-servant relationships bound not just by money, but by the very same earth, water, and air from which both master and servant sprang.
And it is the very same earth. From the first days of their infancy, the master and the slave breathed the same air, drank from the same well, and trod upon the same earth. They played in the same hills, and were equal and same before the same passings of the same seasons, year after year. They sprang from one cloth, weaved of the same one thread. And to not see affection between men who had shared the same cribs of nature, is to turn one's cheek away from the feelings who make us human.
I’ve gone back and forth over the likely intent behind this letter. Regarding its authenticity, if it IS somehow a hoax - boy has it been effective, because it appears to have been referenced in a number of historical (and, presumably, sourced) texts/accounts for roughly 140 years. Knowledge of the origin of the letter certainly impacts both its effect and its purpose. Yet, the fact that the letter appears to have been published contemporaneously in 2 newspapers as an “open” letter suggests that it was most likely intended – at least in part – as a sarcastic jibe against the irony surrounding the (not uncommon) request from a former slaveholder for the voluntary return of a runaway slave. Might it then have been used for propagandistic effect in a Post-Civil War period? Sure. But that, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily negate its authenticity. Plus, given the history of the letter and its sourcing, I find the question of the letter’s intent a more interesting discussion.
I tried reading the letter as if no sarcasm were intended and, instead, allowed for the possibility that what I might find sarcastic today might just be evidence of the profound irony of the circumstances then. Read in any light, the letter is surreal. The circumstances are truly absurd. But, reading into it the level of sincerity that would be necessary to remove any sarcasm is just too surreal, I think. I just find it too difficult to believe that the person who produced the eloquence contained in that letter (whether or not with the assistance of a transcriber or editor) could also have been “simple” or naïve enough to intend this as a sincere consideration of a former slaveholder’s request to return to work.
That said, there is a mixture of tone contained in the letter that gives me pause. I find genuine affection displayed in the bits about how it would do Anderson “good to go back to the dear old home again” and Anderson’s request to give his love to and hope for meeting the Colonel’s family “in the better world.” This reference to the “better world” also suggests to me that Anderson did not expect to ever see the family again in “this” world – and as such, likely didn’t consider the rest of the letter as a “counteroffer” to be taken seriously. Then there is the following sentiment that appears right up front in the first paragraph (the 2nd sentence, to be exact): “I have often felt uneasy about you.”
That one sentence, for me, sums up all of the complexities present in the slave-master relationship. “I have often felt uneasy about you.” Do ya think? Consider this declaration against everything else we learn later in the letter about: the Andersons’ feelings of working without wages for 30 years; getting shot at (twice); the shame brought on Catherine and Matilda “by the violence and wickedness of their young masters"; etc. On the one hand, it redefines the meaning of “understated.” On the other hand, this is arguably the most direct and introspective statement in the letter. I don’t think there is anything cheeky about it. More to the point, it doesn’t really strike me as something one would write if they intended only to dress up everything else in the letter afterward with dripping sarcasm.
So, where does this leave me? I’m not sure exactly. But I noticed while thinking through all of this that my mind often wandered to the character of Jim from “Huckleberry Finn” and an interview I read years ago with the late Ralph Wiley. One of the most enduring controversies surrounding “Huck Finn” is the depiction of Jim as a minstrel-like, simple-minded, runaway slave whose principle purpose seems to be as the butt of much of the book’s humor. Wiley – as well as others, but I think Wiley is among the most eloquent - argued for a very different reading of Jim’s character. In short, Wiley saw Jim as a much more intelligent, savvy and self-aware character who consciously plays a minstrel role in an act of self-preservation to misdirect those around him. In this way, Jim is a more complex, compelling…and realistic character. In much the same light, I think I’m compelled to opt for a more nuanced view of Jourdon Anderson’s letter.
I also find it somewhat ironic that it took “Huck Finn’s” Jim to get me here. When I first read through Anderson’s letter, I couldn’t help thinking it read like something Mark Twain might have written.
In any case, Wow. Thanks for introducing this letter and discussion. This period of US history is still so rich with timely and relevant fodder for study.