Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten
Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again,
promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt
uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before
this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never
heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier
that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me
twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and
am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear
old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther,
Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will
meet in the better world, if not in this. 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.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give
me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month,
with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,--the
folks call her Mrs. Anderson,--and the children--Milly, Jane, and
Grundy--go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has
a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend
church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others
saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The
children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was
no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys
would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you
will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to
decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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