When the Civil War started, Jourdan Anderson and his family took the opportunity to run away

and become free people. Anderson is now responding to a letter written by his former master Col. P.H.
Anderson. In the Colonial’s original letter is a request, asking that Anderson and his family return to work
on his plantation in Tennessee. However, he is not eager to take his offer for obvious reasons. Regardless
of his contention, Anderson maintains a very respectful poise to his formal master.
The Civil War had ended months before this letter was written. The end of the war guaranteed
former slaves’ freedom from their cruel masters. The Reconstruction commenced and black people were
gaining a foot both politically and socially. During this period, they “extended civil rights to freed slaves
and provided black men with voting rights.”1 The black community was gaining the rights of the average
white man. Anderson was not sure that his former master would honor his rights as a free man. He tells
the colonial that they are “afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us
justly and kindly…”2 So, he devised a way to ensure their rights were not encroached upon. If he would
pay them for their thirty-two years of service at the rate he was currently being paid: $25 a month. This
would accrue to more money than was reasonable to expect. This is Anderson’s way to decline his offer
politely.
However, there was a period, after the Reconstruction, of backlash. It was this tremor that made
Anderson careful. He understood that merely months ago, black people were denied all civil rights. And,
with the signing of the South’s surrender, Black people were legally guaranteed rights. Most whites
disagreed. They still thought of Blacks as inferior to themselves and treated them accordingly. There were
many riots and lynching’s many years after the Civil War. Anderson's unrest was smart and warranted.
Black rights were new and exciting, but they were not so easily won as signing a piece of paper.

HR: None
Word Count: 344

1
Bentley, Jerry, Streets, Heather, and Herbert Ziegler, Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History (McGraw-
Hill Education, 2015), 526.
2
Bentley, Streets, Ziegler, Traditions & Encounters, 528.