Category Archives: 1863

Book Review: Vicksburg – Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy

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Vicksburg – Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller

Vicksburg Is The Key To The Control Of The Mississippi River

Vicksburg by Donald L. Miller

Vicksburg by Donald L. Miller

The Mississippi River was a water highway of commerce during Civil War times just as today. The big and muddy river flows for over two thousand miles from its source at Lake Itasca, Minnesota on its way to New Orleans and its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River is nicknamed ‎”Old Man River” and the “Father of Waters” but it gets its name of Mississippi from a French interpretation of “Anishinaabe” which is a Native American name for the river of Misi-ziibi, which means Great River.

“The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.”

President Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln

“See…what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key. Here is Red River which will supply the Confederates with cattle and corn to feed their armies. There are the Arkansas and White Rivers, which can supply cattle and hogs by the thousand. From Vicksburg these supplies can be distributed by rail all over the Confederacy. Then there is the giant depot of supplies on the Yazoo. Let us get Vicksburg and all that country is ours. The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket. I am acquainted with that region and know what I am talking about.”

…President Abraham Lincoln explaining how important Vicksburg was to the Confederacy. Lincoln was pointing at a large wall map in General George B. McClellan’s headquarters during a secret planning meeting to take New Orleans with Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter and General McClellan.

Vicksburg Holds the South’s Halves Together

Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis

“the nailhead that held the South’s two halves together.”

… Confederate President Jefferson Davis regarding Vicksburg.

General Ulysses S. Grant was on a campaign in 1863 to take Vicksburg, Mississippi. If Grant could take Vicksburg and Port Hudson to the south, which comparatively would not be much of a challenge, then the Union would have control of the Mississippi River. Without possession of Vicksburg and control of the Mississippi River the Confederacy would be strangled, it would be deprived of food and fodder needed to supply its soldiers and war efforts in the east. Without Vicksburg and the Mississippi River transportation of vital food such as beef, hogs, corn, rice, and men, arms, ammunition, medicines, and clothing needed to provide the strong armies of Braxton Bragg and Robert E. Lee would be lost. The Confederacy would be cut in half as Confederate President Jefferson Davis said, with the western Confederate states of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana and all their rich resources cut off and blocked from the Confederate armies and states to the east of the Mississippi River.

The loss of Vicksburg would also mean the loss of the vital Southern Mississippi Railroad, another major supply route connecting the western and eastern sections of the Confederacy, which ran from Vicksburg through Jackson. Loss of this railroad would greatly cripple the Confederacy’s war effort. With Vicksburg and the Mississippi River in its control the Confederacy would have the backbone of transportation and resources required to successfully wage war against the Union. President Abraham Lincoln correctly said, “We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can defy us from Vicksburg. It means hog and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the states of the far South, and a cotton country where they can raise the staple without interference.” Lincoln knew Vicksburg was the key. So did Ulysses S. Grant.

A Sampling Of Stories From Vicksburg

An Introduction To Ulysses S. Grant

  • Ulysses S. Grant was a man with an economy of words, he spoke only when needed and then in the shortest and most direct way possible while still accurately conveying what he wanted to say. When he was with people he believed he could trust, like with his staff, he would open up some and tell entertaining stories, most likely while whittling away on a piece of wood with a pocketknife.
  • Grant would not tell a dirty or profane story, but he would listen to such stories when told by others and he seemed to enjoy them. Grant did not swear, a great contrast to General William Tecumseh Sherman and Grant’s staff member John A. Rawlins, both of whom could peel paint with their colorful and frequent swearing. Grant once explained why he chose not to swear, “I have always noticed… that swearing helps to rouse a man’s anger; and when a man flies into passion his adversary who keeps cool always gets the better of him.”
  • Grant had a great ability to concentrate. He could focus and center his mind strongly on a task. If Grant had to rise from a table while he was working to get a paper or document from someplace else in the room, then he would remain in a hunched posture as if he were still seated in his desk chair while he went to get the item he needed.
  • Mark Twain thought that Ulysses S. Grant was a fine writer and that Grant’s autobiography Personal Memoirs, which he wrote at the end of his life and which Twain helped to publish, was the best example of military prose since Julius Caesar’s Commentaries. Ulysses S. Grant did not like office work, he wanted to be in camp or field with his men, but he would work alone into the wee hours of the night writing out orders, communications, and other administrative chores.

Ulysses S. Grant And The Battle of Belmont

  • On November 6, 1861, Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant took five regiments, two companies of cavalry, and a battery of six cannons from Cairo, Illinois down the Mississippi River in six steamers supported by two timberclads to his first actual fighting experience of the Civil War at Belmont, Missouri. Grant led his men at the Battle of Belmont on November 7, 1861. He first had great success in the morning by driving the Rebels out of their camp.
  • As the Yankees took the rebel camp at Belmont Grant lost control of his men. His troops began to search through the Confederate tents looking for souvenirs, trophies, and whatever they might help themselves to. Bands began to celebrate playing “Yankee Doodle” and “The Star Spangled Banner”. The Billy Yanks had turned their attention away from fighting to celebration too soon.
    • Ulysses S. Grant

    Ulysses S. Grant

  • Grant lost the discipline of his men and even that of his officers at Belmont. The politician General John McClernand took the opportunity of the occasion and began congratulating the men for their great victory, as if he were politicking on a soapbox. Grant was disgusted with the behavior of his officers and later explained, “They galloped about from one cluster of men to another and at every halt delivered a short eulogy upon the Union cause.”
  • During the Battle of Belmont a horse Ulysses S. Grant was sitting on was shot and killed by a rebel bullet, a new horse was quickly provided. It was one of two close calls with death for Grant at this battle.
  • To stop his celebrating and out of control men Grant ordered the Confederate tents set on fire. The Billy Yank’s victory celebration ended at Belmont and then they had to flee back to their boats when Confederate reinforcements arrived. Grant and his men had to fight through the coming rebels and retreat back to their boats. Grant was the last one to the Union steamers. As he arrived at his headquarters boat, the Memphis Belle, the crew quickly placed a wooden plank from the boat to the river bank. Grant’s sure-footed horse took him over the plank to the relative safety of the Memphis Belle’s deck.
  • After coming aboard the Memphis Belle Grant went to the captain’s stateroom and laid down on a sofa. But he soon rose from the sofa and left the stateroom, “to observe what was going on.” When he returned later to the sofa he noticed that a rebel bullet had shot through the boat and into the sofa at the exact spot where shortly before his head laid. Once more, Ulysses S. Grant had dodged death at Belmont.
  • At the Battle of Belmont both sides suffered approximately the same number of casualties, but they were more significant for Grant with 20% of his smaller force of men becoming casualties. For Grant, his leadership at Belmont was varied. His morning efforts were good, but then he did not chase after the retreating rebels and he lost the discipline of his men. Later in the day Grant was surprised by rebel reinforcements and a counterattack, had to retreat, and nearly lost his troops. Vicksburg author Donald L. Miller uses a quote from Civil War author and historian Shelby Foote to explain that Belmont was a learning experience for Ulysses S. Grant. Miller uses excerpts of what Foote wrote about Grant in volume one of his epic The Civil War – A Narrative. Shelby Foote wrote that, “Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience.” Grant learned lessons of war at the Battle of Belmont.

An Introduction To William Tecumseh Sherman

    William Tecumseh Sherman

    William Tecumseh Sherman

  • In Vicksburg Miller gives us a good introduction to William Tecumseh Sherman writing that Sherman was a tall and lanky man who was nervous and high-strung, that he had some emotional troubles, such as a lack of confidence in himself which would rise up to haunt him from time to time. Sherman could fall into a depression and become worthless to himself and unfit for his military duty.
  • Before the Civil War William Tecumseh Sherman was a failure at just about anything he tried. In 1853 he resigned from the army and became a manager in San Francisco of a bank that failed, soon more failures in endeavors such as banking, investing, real estate, law, streetcars, and farming followed. Sherman once said of himself that he was, “the Jonah of banking….wherever I go there is a breakdown.”
  • William Tecumseh Sherman’s nickname was “Cump,” he was born in Lancaster, Ohio and his father gave him his middle name from Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief. Cump’s father was a lawyer and a state supreme court justice in Ohio but he died in 1829 when his son was only nine-years-old. Young Sherman then went to live with the family of Thomas Ewing Sr., Ewing was a successful lawyer and would become a United States senator. Ewing treated William Tecumseh Sherman as if he were his own son and although Ewing was stern, he provided William with a fine home and family environment for growing up.
  • Stepfather Ewing used his political strength to gain an appointment to West Point for William Tecumseh Sherman. At West Point young Sherman did well academically. He was good at drawing, chemistry, and natural philosophy (study of nature and the physical universe) and graduated ranking sixth in his class. The young and rambunctious Sherman would have ranked fourth in his class if he had not earned so many demerits for bad behavior.

“Thank God, the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”

… President Abraham Lincoln upon learning that General Ulysses S. Grant had taken Vicksburg on July 4, 1863.

VICKSBURG Audiobook Excerpt by Simon & Schuster:

VICKSBURG Audiobook Excerpt

* Audio via Soundcloud

Vicksburg Contents

Vicksburg tells the story of Ulysses S. Grant taking Vicksburg and the Mississippi River for the Union in four main parts with a total of twenty-three chapters. Listed here is the Contents of Vicksburg so you may see what a full and complete work of 688 pages it is:

Author’s Note
Prologue

— PART ONE —
Chapter 1 Cairo
Chapter 2 River Warrior
Chapter 3 Winter Fortress
Chapter 4 A Tremendous Murder Mill

— PART TWO —
Chapter 5 “The Battle for the Mississippi”
Chapter 6 “These Troublous Times”
Chapter 7 Secessionist Citadel
Chapter 8 Rebel Victory

— PART THREE —
Chapter 9 Anxiety and Intrigue
Chapter 10 Revolution
Chapter 11 Grant’s March
Chapter 12 The Chickasaw Slaughter Pen
Chapter 13 Mud and Misery
Chapter 14 “Things Fall Apart. . .”
Chapter 15 Steele’s Bayou
Chapter 16 Crisis
Chapter 17 The Entering Wedge
Chapter 18 This One Object

— PART FOUR —
Chapter 19 Pursuit
Chapter 20 The Hill of Death
Chapter 21 A Circle of Fire
Chapter 22 “The Crisis in on Us”
Chapter 23 “It is Great, Mr. Wells”

Epilogue
Appendix: Vickburg Battlefield Casualties
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Index

My Recommendation of Vicksburg – Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy

Vicksburg – Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller is an authoritative, complete, engaging, and enjoyable to read book about an important Civil War campaign that has not received enough attention. Author Donald L. Miller fixes that. Miller brings to Grant’s Vicksburg campaign the attention and explanation that it needs and deserves. Miller’s effort with Vicksburg brings to the reader all the rich and crucial history of Ulysses S. Grant’s Vicksburg campaign. You are certainly familiar with the Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg which ended July 3, 1863, but Gettysburg is only one half of the great and important Union victories in early July 1863. Grant’s victory at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, is the other great and important half of the full story.

Vicksburg belongs on a shelf in a bookcase in every personal or formal Civil War library. It belongs on the same Civil War book shelf where other major titles such as Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson, The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote, the Army of the Potomac trilogy by Bruce Catton, the Centennial History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton, the Ulysses S. Grant trilogy by Bruce Catton, Hard Tack and Coffee by John D. Billings, and the four volumes of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War reside, it ranks in prestige with them. Vicksburg – Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller joins the book club of the best of the best of Civil War books.

Vicksburg is a book to read and reread. I suggest you add your own generous notes, thoughts, underlines, and highlights to the pages as you read about Ulysses S. Grant’s successful campaign to take Vicksburg and the Mississippi River for the Union. Use this book up. Write in it. Let the pages get bent or torn from many reading sessions. It’s fine if you occasionally drip your coffee or wine on a page, or have finger smudges in it. Those book page-reading battle scars are proof that you are enjoying and learning from Vicksburg. Have all that happen because you are reading a book that will reward you with great Civil War history story-telling of one of the most important campaigns of the Civil War.

Grant’s victory at Vicksburg was a major factor of the Union winning the Civil War, the United States remaining united, and freedom coming to those held in bondage. I believe most Civil War historians and students would say that the Battle of Gettysburg has overshadowed Vicksburg in the amount of attention and importance it has received. There is no doubt that both battles are important, very important in the outcome of the Civil War. But now with Donald L. Miller’s Vicksburg – Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy this western battle gets the attention and importance it deserves. We are privileged to have such an esteemed author and historian as Donald L. Miller write this book. Vicksburg will become a Civil War standard.

If you wear your copy of Vicksburg out with your notes, underlines, highlights, and other page-reading battle scars, then buy another. It’s that good.

…Jonathan R. Allen

Author Donald L. Miller

Donald L Miller-Photograph by Austin Medina

Donald L Miller – Photograph by Austin Medina


Vicksburg – Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy author Donald L. Miller comes to the subject of the Civil War with a qualified and rich background as a writer, historian, educator, and lecturer. Miller has written ten books including these:

  • Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany
  • Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America
  • City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America
  • The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields (with Richard E. Sharpless)
  • Lewis Mumford: A Life
  • D-Days in the Pacific
  • The Story of World War II (with Henry Steele Commager)

A Few Of Donald L. Miller’s Many Honors And Achievements

  • His book Masters of the Air will become a Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks television series.
  • The John Henry MacCracken Professor of History Emeritus at Lafayette College.
  • He has been the host, co-producer, or the historical consultant for more than thirty television documentaries.
  • His depth of knowledge of United States history makes him one of our most respected historians and authorities on World War II, the Civil War, and Modern United States History.
  • PBS and HBO have used Miller as a consultant and adviser on historical productions.
  • He has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post.
  • Miller has won six awards for excellence in teaching and five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • He was the resident scholar at All Souls College, Oxford, and the Crayenborgh Lecturer at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
  • Both the United States State Department and the Smithsonian Institution have had Miller as a lecturer.

Book Information

Vicksburg by Donald L. Miller

Vicksburg by Donald L. Miller

Title: Vicksburg – Grant’s campaign That Broke the Confederacy
Author: Donald L. Miller
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, October 29, 2019
Pages: 688
Book Dimensions: 6″ x 1.4″ x 9″
ISBN-13: 978-1451641370
ISBN-10: 1451641370
Price: Hardcover: $35.00, Ebook: $16.99, Audio Download: $29.99

Where To Buy/order:

You can find Vicksburg at your local bookstore and online:
Simon & Schuster
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Google Play
Apple Books
Kobo

Editorial Reviews

“A quarter of a million slaves lived in the lower Mississippi Valley when the Civil War broke out. In Donald Miller’s Vicksburg, we learn not only the story of the war’s great western turning point, but how Ulysses S. Grant evolved into a military emancipator of most of those African Americans and therefore with time crushed the Confederacy. Carefully researched and written with sizzling and persuasive prose, Miller has found the way to write both military and emancipation history in one profound package. Never have headquarters, slave quarters, and the ultimate purpose of the war been so seamlessly and brilliantly demonstrated.” …David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

“The fullest and best history of the Vicksburg campaign.” …James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era and The War That Forged a Nation..

“This is a magnificent book, certainly one of the very best ever written about the Civil War. It has breadth and depth, and it is written in a way that makes the reader truly understand not only the battle and siege of Vicksburg, not only the Civil War, but war itself.” …John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide.

“Readers will marvel at how Grant—a washed-up dry-goods clerk at the beginning of the Civil War—acquires the power and skill that made him the mastermind at Vicksburg of the largest amphibious army-navy operation staged by the U.S. military until D-Day. In a narrative taut with drama, Miller recounts how this resolute Union crusader takes the war down the Mississippi. . . . War history alive with probing intelligence and irresistible passion.”, …Booklist

“Miller deftly conjures the campaign’s uncertainty and drama—the surprises that lay around every bend of the region’s forbidding terrain and swampy waterways. At the heart of his story is U.S. Grant, who emerges here as a master of maneuver and improvisation, and a hero made human and real. This is military history at its best.” …Elizabeth R. Varon, author of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War.

“This superbly written narrative is a portrait of America’s greatest soldier, warts and all, an accounting of Grant’s moral evolution on the slave question, of his many tactical gambles and errors, as well as his strategic triumph in the decisive campaign of America’s most important war. We also meet ordinary soldiers, hear the iron dice roll, smell swamps and river lands that impede key logistics in the far-flung Western theater, feel the summer heat and thickly humid air. Most remarkably, we are guided up and down the Mississippi over the course of the greatest amphibious campaign of the 19th century.” …Cathal J. Nolan, author of The Allure of Battle.

“Grant has had his biographers over the years, but in Miller he has finally found a writer who captures him in his completeness as a man and a military leader, overcoming heavy odds and repeated failures to win the decisive campaign of the war.” …Rob Citino, Executive Director, Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, and Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian, The National World War II Museum.

Freedman Jourdon Anderson Writes A Letter To His Old Master

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“Letter From A Freedman” (1865)

Master Simon Legree and slave Uncle Tom, a scene from Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Master Simon Legree and slave Uncle Tom, a scene from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Slaves were not treated as human beings in the slave-holding South. They were treated as animals, nothing more than beasts of burden to their owners. The lives of the slaves were like hell on Earth. The exploitation of their toil made for high profits and riches for their owners. Slavery was called the “Peculiar Institution,” but a more truthful name would have been the “Cruel Institution.”

If a slave gained his freedom, why would he ever voluntarily return to work for his former master?

What Was The Life Of A Slave Like?

  • The Peculiar Institution of slavery was a brutal institution. Slaves were whipped, beaten, branded, chained, mutilated, raped, imprisoned, or killed by their masters.
  • The living conditions of the slaves were miserable. They had to rely on their owners for shelter and the owner’s concern for his slaves varied. Some owners would provide their slaves with small shacks or huts, some did not and the slaves had to fashion their housing out of whatever materials might be provided or scrounged up.
  • Most common as shelter for the slaves was a simple one-room shack that was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. As many as ten slaves might be crowded into the same shack. Sickness and disease spread easily in these living conditions.
    • Scars of a whipped Mississippi slave.

    Scars of a whipped Mississippi slave.

  • Slaves were not taught to read or write. Some states prohibited slaves from learning to read and write because it was feared such knowledge would encourage the slaves to rebel, rise up, or escape. Uneducated slaves had to depend on their owners and this helped to establish the owner’s dominance and control over his slaves.
  • Frederick Law Olmsted was a landscape architect, journalist, and social critic. He was in Mississippi in 1853 when he wrote about what life for a slave was like; “A cast mass of the slaves pass their lives, from the moment they are able to go afield in the picking season till they drop worn out in the grave, in incessant labor, in all sorts of weather, at all seasons of the year, without any other change or relaxation than is furnished by sickness, without the smallest hope of any improvement either in their condition, in their food, or in their clothing, which are of the plainest and coarsest kind, and indebted solely to the forbearance or good temper of the overseer for exception from terrible physical suffering.”
  • If a slave complained about his or her housing, clothing, care, health, work, or food, then punishment would most likely follow. A whipping or worse was given to the slave who complained. The owner’s dominance over the slave was always demonstrated and kept strong. Complaining slaves suffered for their courage and boldness of protesting to their owner.
  • The beds of the slaves simply laid on top of the dirt inside their shacks or huts. Their beds were made of nothing more than straw, old rags, or whatever might be found by the slave that could possibly be used as bedding. The slaves typically had little or no furniture, and what furniture they did have they made for themselves. Perhaps a broken and worn out throw-away piece of furniture from the plantation house might be obtained by the slaves, if they were lucky.
  • The slaves who worked in the plantation house for the owner’s family usually had a bit better and easier life than the slaves who worked outside in the fields. The house slaves usually had better living quarters, better food, and better clothing than the slaves working in the fields for the master.
  • Cooking pots and pans were usually hard to come by for the slaves, utensils and such were scarce items for the slaves. The slaves would innovate and find other ways to cook their food. A “calabash” was a pumpkin or gourd shell hollowed out to create a large food bowl used for cooking or serving. The owners did not want to spend any money unnecessarily on their slaves, making cornbread and fatty, tough, meat regular items of sustenance for the slaves. Some owners allowed their slaves to have gardens so they could grow their own food. The slaves would have to tend to these gardens after working all day in the field.
  • The slave owners would provide a pair of shoes a year, and allocate out underwear, shirts, trousers, dresses, coats or jackets, for their slaves. A slave’s clothing often fit poorly being either too large or too small, and made of coarse, rough, and uncomfortable material.
  • The slaves worked from sunrise to sunset and if there was a full moon, then into the night as well. Some owners worked their slaves every day, some might give their slaves Sunday off (some owners allowed their slaves to have church services), some might give their slaves one day off every month or after some other length of time. Working slaves meant money and profit for the owner. Free time for a slave was a precious thing to have.

“When I was three or four years old my mother was whipped to death by the mistress with a cowhide whip.”
– Former slave Henry Walton, Marshall County, Mississippi.

Who Was Jourdon Anderson?

Freedman Jourdon Anderson

Freedman Jourdon Anderson

Jourdon Anderson was born a slave in Tennessee sometime around 1825. When he was only seven or eight-years-old he was sold by his first owner to General Paulding Anderson of Wilson County, Tennessee. General Anderson then gave Jourdon to his son Patrick Henry Anderson to be his servant and playmate. Patrick Henry was about the same age as his servant Jourdon.

Patrick Henry Anderson grew up to be known as Colonel P. H. Anderson, his slave Jourdon grew up and got married. Jourdon Anderson and his wife Mandy had eleven children. Jourdan would continue to be Colonel P. H. Anderson’s slave until Yankee soldiers freed him during the Civil War when they camped on the Anderson plantation in 1864. After becoming a freeman, Jourdon eventually lived in Dayton, Ohio where he worked at various times as a janitor, a carriage driver, and in a stable taking care of horses. In 1894 Jourdon became a sexton at the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

The Civil War brought about the end of slavery. With the harvest season coming soon the late summer of 1865, Colonel P. H. Anderson’s Tennessee plantation was in bad shape and the colonel was in debt. The colonel desperately needed the help of his former slave and childhood playmate Jourdon for the hard work of bringing in the crops. In August Colonel P. H. Anderson sent a letter to Jourdon Anderson asking him to return to the plantation in Tennessee and work for him harvesting the crops.

Jourdon Anderson dictated a sardonic response letter to his former master. Jourdon’s humorous, mocking, and scornful letter to his former master was published in the Cincinnati Commercial and the New York Daily Tribune, making Jourdon a media sensation of his day. Colonel P. H. Anderson had to sell his plantation at a fraction of its worth to pay off debt. He died only a few years later when he was forty-four-years-old. The freeman Jourdon Anderson died on April 15, 1907.

Explanatory notes for Jourdon’s letter:
* George Carter was a carpenter.
* Miss Martha is Colonel P. H. Anderson’s wife.
* Miss Mary is Colonel P. H. Anderson’s daughter.
* Henry is most likely Colonel P. H. Anderson’s son, Patrick Henry Anderson, Jr.
* Matilda and Catherine are Jourdon Anderson’s daughters who did not go to Ohio.
* Valentine Winters was a banker, and friend of Jourdon Anderson.
* There are multiple ways Jourdon Anderson’s first name is spelled. “Jourdon” is used here in this post.

Jourdon Anderson’s Letter To His Old Master

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Jourdon Anderson's letter to his old master.

Jourdon Anderson’s letter to his old master.

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.

Family of African American Slaves On Smith's Plantation In Beaufort, South Carolina.

Family of South Carolina African American Slaves.

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 were 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 twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have 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’s 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 poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come 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.

Learn Civil War History Podcast Episode Seven: Freedman Jourdon Anderson Writes A Letter To His Old Master

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“My mammy… belong to old man Weathersby in Amite County. He was de meanes’ man what ever lived. My pappy was sol’ befo’ I was born. I doan know nothin’ ’bout him. . . . Mammy said when I was jes big ’nough to nuss an’ wash leetle chulluns, I was sol’ to Marse Hiram Cassedy an’ dat man give me ter his darter, Miss Mary, to be her maid. . . . I was never whupped afte’ I went to Marse Cassedy.”
– Former slave Fanny Smith Hodges, Pike County, Mississippi.

“I seed slavery from all sides. I’se seed ’em git sick and die an’ buried. I’se seed ’em sole [sold] away from der loved ones. I’se seed ’em whipped by de overseers, an’ brung in by de patrol riders. I’se seed ’em cared fo’ well wid plenty ter eat an’ clo’se ter keep ’em warm, an’ wid good cabins ter live in.”
– Former slave Rosa Mangum, Simpson County, Mississippi.

Slave Narratives Tell First-Hand What Life For A Slave Was Like

The Federal Writers’ Project was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Projects Administration created to help get people back to work during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Federal Writers’ Project recorded and transcribed a compilation of 3,500 oral narratives and histories told by former slaves. These first-hand slave narratives provide us with great insight as to what life was like for a slave in the South.

Here are two videos of actors and celebrities voice-acting some of the stories told in the Federal Writers’ Project slave narratives. The original recordings of the slave narratives can be difficult to understand because of scratchy recordings, the poor recording technology of the 1930s as compared to today’s, and the sometimes hard to understand voices of the former slaves who were then aged into their 80s or 90s, some of them were even over 100-years-old.

Slave Memories Part 1

Slave Memories Part 2

“When you is a slave, you ain’t got no mo’ chance than a bullfrog.”
– Former slave Virginia Harris, Coahoma County, Mississippi.

More posts:
Free And Slave States Map – State, Territory, And City Populations
Slavery
Thirteenth Amendment Abolishes Slavery
Robert Smalls
1850 Fugitive Slave Law

 

My book 501 Civil War Quotes and Notes features quotes made before, during, and after the Civil War. Each quote has an informative note to explain the circumstances and background of the quote. Learn Civil War history from the spoken words and writings of the military commanders, political leaders, the Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs who fought in the battles, the abolitionists who strove for the freedom of the slaves, the descriptions of battles, and the citizens who suffered at home. Their voices tell us the who, what, where, when, and why of the Civil War. Available as a Kindle device e-book or as a paperback. Get 501 Civil War Quotes and Notes now!