Marxists in California must have missed CNN (Confederate Network News) on January 1, 1863, when Republican President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all the slaves from Democrat southern states. Following the Union victory over the Confederacy at the Battle of Antietam, the executive order declared that any enslaved person in Confederate states would be set free.

However, there was no one to free in California since that state entered the union in 1849 as a free state. But today, the absurd California Reparations Task Force wants to give up to $1.2 million to each eligible resident who might have had an ancestor that was enslaved in another state before 1863.

That sounds so progressive: take money from people who were not slave owners and give it to people who were not slaves.

Image: Slavery in the American South.

Today’s bizarre conversation about slave reparations could only have started in California, a state that leans so far left that pink vagina hats are probably considered conservative. The failing state is led by Democrat Governor Gavin “Hair Gel” Newsom.

Newsom thinks that ruining the nation’s largest state is a path to the presidency: rampant crime where perps are rarely arrested, much less prosecuted; record-breaking drug overdoses as fentanyl comes through the state’s open southern border; textbooks filled with graphic sexual material promoting questionable lifestyles; homeless tents littering once iconic streets; and stores and offices sitting empty as businesses and their employees relocate to thriving red states.

The ridiculous discussion about reparations makes us wonder what Jourdon Anderson would have thought about all this.

Until his emancipation during the Civil War, Jourdon Anderson belonged to Colonel P. H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee. Like many slaves, Jourdon’s surname was the same as the family that kept him in bondage.

Upon being freed, Jourdon and his wife Mary moved to Ohio, where both Jourdons found work that supported their growing family, consisting of some children born into slavery and some born free.

While Jourdon was thriving as a freedman, his former owner in Tennessee, like many plantation slave owners, discovered that it wasn’t easy running a farm when you had to pay your workers. Knowing where Jourdon had moved, Colonel Anderson wrote his former slave asking if he would return to the plantation and work for wages.

Unable to read or write, the letter was read to Jourdon, who dictated his response to his former “master.” That letter was published in the New York Daily Tribune on August 22, 1865, in a front-page article titled, “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master.” In discussing the possibility of his returning to the plantation as a paid employee, the former slave Jourdon proposes reparations for him and his wife for the labor they performed under duress for their former owner. That is the definition of reparations!

As you read Jourdon’s letter, ask yourself if, today, Jourdon Anderson would follow the path of Dr. Martin Luther King, who believed the content of a person’s character was more important than their race, or if he would have adhered to Al Sharpton/Black Lives Matter philosophy that promotes black victimhood.

Image: New York Daily Tribute front page, August 22, 1865 (transcript below).

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 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.

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 and his wife Mandy had 11 children (although not all survived to adulthood) and lived to their 70s. His biggest desire was for all his children to be educated and earn their way in life, which research shows was achieved.

Robin M. Itzler is a regular contributor to American Thinker. She can be reached at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com.