BHM: To My Old Master

[sleazure]

In honour of Black History Month, here's a letter from an emancipated slave to his old master in response to an offer of employment...

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

I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

This was on the Huffington post today. Good for a smile.

 

[Carling]

Awesome!!! and to think, some GOP'ers think blacks were better off as slaves,than free...smh

 

[Aardvark154]

This is not a newly discovered letter as some websites have implied, but is reprinted from L. Maria Child's The Freedmen's Book printed in Boston by Ticknor and Fields in 1865. The fact that both the letter and the book are both dated 1865 (although there were five months remaining in the year, I don't know when in 1865 the book was published) does give me a certain doubt.


By the way L. Maria Child besides being an noted abolitionist and anti-expansionist was the author of "Over the River and through the Woods to Grandfather's house we go."

 

[sleazure]

This is not a newly discovered letter as some websites have implied, but is reprinted from L. Maria Child's The Freedmen's Book printed in Boston by Ticknor and Fields in 1865. The fact that both the letter and the book are both dated 1865 (although there were five months remaining in the year, I don't know when in 1865 the book was published) does give me a certain doubt.


By the way L. Maria Child besides being an noted abolitionist and anti-expansionist was the author of "Over the River and through the Woods to Grandfather's house we go."

As far as I can see, the attribute to The Freedman's Book was for the accompanying photograph, which seems unrelated.

The story on HufPost has a link to a scanned newspaper article. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7035/6790780585_466117fe88_o.jpg

Maybe I'll try to embed it later.

 

[sleazure]

Remarkably, it can be cross-checked here (assuming this is a reliable source): http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1865-08-22/ed-1/seq-7/;mode=full

 

[Aardvark154]

As far as I can see, the attribute to The Freedman's Book was for the accompanying photograph, which seems unrelated.

Click on the Freedmen's Book link http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38479/38479-h/38479-h.htm#Page_265 That the letter appeared in the August 22 1865 edition of The Daily New York Tribune (Which was a major abolitionist and at at this point radical Republican newspaper) relieves a fair bit of my doubt and also explains how an editor in Boston heard of a letter from Ohio.

This article gives a good bit of "back story." http://kottke.org/12/02/what-happened-to-the-former-slave-that-wrote-his-old-master

 

[wigglee]

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