How did ex-slave's letter to master come to be?
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120714/DA00PSBG1.html
By ALLEN G. BREED and HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) - The photograph, scratched and undated, is captioned "Brother Jordan Anderson." He is a middle-aged black man with a long beard and a righteous stare, as if he were a preacher locking eyes with a sinner, or a judge about to dispatch a thief to the gallows.
Anderson was a former slave who was freed from a Tennessee plantation by Union troops in 1864 and spent his remaining 40 years in Ohio. He lived quietly and likely would have been forgotten, if not for a remarkable letter to his former master published in a Cincinnati newspaper shortly after the Civil War.
Treasured as a social document, praised as a masterpiece of satire, Anderson's letter has been anthologized and published all over the world. Historians teach it, and the letter turns up occasionally on a blog or on Facebook. Humorist Andy Borowitz read the letter recently and called it, in an email to The Associated Press, "something Twain would have been proud to have written."
Addressed to one Col. Patrick Henry Anderson, who apparently wanted Jordan to come back to the plantation east of Nashville, the letter begins cheerfully, with the former slave expressing relief that "you had not forgotten Jordon" (there are various spellings of the name) and were "promising to do better for me than anybody else can." But, he adds, "I have often felt uneasy about you."
FULL story at link.
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This circa 1890 image provided by Dayton History shows Valentine Winters. The Dayton banker was an abolitionist who once hosted Abraham Lincoln at his mansion. Jordan Anderson's remarkable letter to his ex-master was reportedly dictated to Winters ...
http://www.knoxnews.com/photos/galleries/2012/jul/14/jordan-anderson/
This is a compelling story to begin with, and the photos help bring it to life. 
In one place they are debating if black people could do math.
Jordan's son was a doctor. That's good evidence he came from a family that valued education, even when they were enslaved.
In the article Professor Finkenbine says, "I think the letter is clearly his ideas and, for the most part, his own words" - though Winters probably had "some minor role in shaping the language."
I think even this mild qualification goes too far. My wife, my kids, my siblings, my mom, and quite a few other relatives have a powerful ability to switch from more formal to more vernacular languages depending upon their surroundings.
Comparisons to Mark Twain, who had a similar facility with language, are apt.
There were many slave holding families who depended not only upon the physical labors of their slaves, but their intellectual capacities as well. Clearly the plantation was dependent upon Jordan's management skills.
"What's amazing is that the current living relatives of Col. Anderson are still angry at Jordan for not coming back," knowing that the plantation was in serious disrepair after the war, said Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Maryland's Morgan State University.
Brother Jordan Anderson I salute you!
