Jourdan Anderson was a freed slave from Big Spring, Tennessee who became famous after his August 1865 letter to his former master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, was discovered recently and generated much buzz over the internet.

In the time since emancipation from slavery, Anderson had moved to Ohio where he found paid work and was supporting his family. The letter turned up in the August 22 edition of the New York Daily Tribune.

Responding to his former master’s request for him to return to work on his farm in Tennessee, Anderson casually recounted several incidents of people killing as if it was a commonplace in his slave years. He also requested his old master to pay his back wages in order for him to return to the farm to live together again. Regarding the freedom his former master promised he would receive, he stated: “As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville.”