The Uses of English: Two Nifty Things
May. 13th, 2009 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlSo, I came across two amusing things recently and wanted to put them here.
A Very Descript Man by J H Parker
I am such a dolent man,
I eptly work each day;
My acts are all becilic,
I've just ane things to say.
My nerves are strung, my hair is kempt,
I'm gusting and I'm span:
I look with dain on everyone
And am a pudent man.
I travel cognito and make
A delible impression:
I overcome a slight chalance,
With gruntled self-possession.
My dignation would be great
If I should digent be:
I trust my vagance will bring
An astrous life for me.
I found this here which linked to here. At both sites there's vigorous debate over the authenticity of this letter; it strikes me as eminently possible that some freed slaves could be intelligent and wily enough to become literate despite the laws against their education and/or to find someone to transcribe their dictated letters, and that they could compose prose of this intelligence and quality -- it would only take one to write this letter -- and also I find it informative that the most vocal proponent of the letter's fraudulence also states Frederick Douglass to be a hoax, but I am neither a trained historian nor dispassionate on this subject.
With that disclaimer, I now reproduce this letter, because I *had* to paste it into my journal. It is Jourdon Anderson's response to an entreaty to return from his former master Colonel Anderson.
Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson
Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find 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 Col. 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 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 $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here 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 Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, 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.
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. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly--and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.
I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve--and die if it comes to that--than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson
From The Freedmen's Book compiled by Lydia Maria Child.
A Very Descript Man by J H Parker
I am such a dolent man,
I eptly work each day;
My acts are all becilic,
I've just ane things to say.
My nerves are strung, my hair is kempt,
I'm gusting and I'm span:
I look with dain on everyone
And am a pudent man.
I travel cognito and make
A delible impression:
I overcome a slight chalance,
With gruntled self-possession.
My dignation would be great
If I should digent be:
I trust my vagance will bring
An astrous life for me.
I found this here which linked to here. At both sites there's vigorous debate over the authenticity of this letter; it strikes me as eminently possible that some freed slaves could be intelligent and wily enough to become literate despite the laws against their education and/or to find someone to transcribe their dictated letters, and that they could compose prose of this intelligence and quality -- it would only take one to write this letter -- and also I find it informative that the most vocal proponent of the letter's fraudulence also states Frederick Douglass to be a hoax, but I am neither a trained historian nor dispassionate on this subject.
With that disclaimer, I now reproduce this letter, because I *had* to paste it into my journal. It is Jourdon Anderson's response to an entreaty to return from his former master Colonel Anderson.
Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson
Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find 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 Col. 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 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 $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here 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 Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, 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.
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. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly--and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.
I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve--and die if it comes to that--than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson
From The Freedmen's Book compiled by Lydia Maria Child.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 01:04 pm (UTC)I recall a skit once by a comedian discussing letters from the front by Civil War veterans discussing the considerably higher literary quality of letters than you would find today among people of almost any education.
Edit: I don't know what TN laws were, but I know that in VA, there were some slaves who were educated and were often plantation or business administrators. I know the overseer of the Beazley place was a slave. (*wince* My grandfather's grandparents...)
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Date: 2009-05-13 01:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-13 01:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-13 01:39 pm (UTC)The poem is very funny. :)
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Date: 2009-05-13 01:58 pm (UTC)And if you liked "A Very Descript Man", you'll love "How I Met My Wife".
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Date: 2009-05-13 02:57 pm (UTC)WTFBBQ?1!!?!? That's some hoax, to get every white-run newspaper in the US and England in on the action. Contemporary reports of speeches by Douglass are perfectly consonant, style-wise, with his published writing.
but I am neither a trained historian nor dispassionate on this subject.
Even if this gentleman may have had some editorial help from, say, a clergyman friend (either white or a free person of color), what would that "prove"? Most human beings--including professional writers like me--seek help with really important documents. That doesn't make us "hoaxes".
Bah. White supremacists are always their own best counter-arguments.
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Date: 2009-05-13 08:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-13 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:Oh, I believe this letter.
Date: 2009-05-13 09:59 pm (UTC)Colonel Anderson's gall seems all too typical to me.
Re: Oh, I believe this letter.
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Date: 2009-05-13 11:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-14 02:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-14 06:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-14 06:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-14 09:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-25 10:44 pm (UTC)Without following the links about the authenticity of the letter, I can believe that it is genuine. I have read quite a few documents from slaves and former slaves of the colonial and antebellum period (Rhode Island was one point of the Triangle Trade, after all), and they usually have a very high quality of writing. These were educated people (however they obtained it) from an era that valued erudition.
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