PRIMARY DOCUMENTS
Jourdon Anderson, “To My Old Master” (1865)
Jourdon Anderson, a former slave, dictated this letter to his old master, Col. Patrick Henry Anderson, in August 1865 after Col. Anderson asked Jourdon to return to his former plantation and work for him in Big Spring, Tennessee. Scholars have not located Col. Anderson’s original letter but Jourdon’s answer, tone, and description of the meaning of freedom encapsulate the experience of emancipation for African American freed-people and the relationship between former slaves and slaveowners.
The first time I introduced students to Jourdon’s letter, one class member asked if it was real. Scholars have investigated the provenance of the document and determined that the letter and circumstances it describes were undoubtedly true. Jourdon dictated his letter to an abolitionist named Valentine Winters (cited in the letter) and it was first published by the Cincinnati Commercial in August 1865 and then was subsequently reprinted by the New York Daily Tribune [top of column 2].
Scholars think Jourdon was probably purchased as a boy to be a playmate for young Col. Anderson (and Jourdon likely took the last name of the Colonel’s family). When his former slaves refused to return to his plantation, Col. Anderson sold it to try to pay off his debts. He died in 1867, just two years later, at the age of 44. Apparently, the Colonel’s descendants are still mad at Jourdon for not coming back to the plantation! Jourdon and Amanda (Mandy) Anderson had 11 children together and probate records suggest Jourdan died in 1905 when he was about 80 years old. The full story about the letter, its history, and aftermath can be read here.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Message to Congress: The Four Freedoms” (1941)
In his annual State of the Union Address in January 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that world order was founded on 4 “essential human freedoms:” freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
The Four Freedoms inspired American around the country, but they became more famous when Norman Rockwell connected the principles with the defense of traditional American values in a collection of paintings that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943. By translating the Four Freedoms into real images of small-town Americans, Rockwell helped ordinary citizens understand what the United States was fighting for in World War II and the federal government sold millions of reprints while the paintings toured the country as the centerpiece of the Four Freedoms Show.
Margaret Chase Smith, “Declaration of Conscience” (1950)
Few politicians had the courage to stand up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist inquisition but the Senate’s only woman, Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), did. On 1 June 1950, she boarded the Senate subway and encountered Joe McCarthy. “Margaret, you look very serious,” he said. “Are you going to make a speech?” Without hesitation, Smith replied, “Yes, and you will not like it.”
In her speech, Smith discussed the basic principles of Americanism and enumerated 4 fundamental rights for a free society: the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, and the right of independent thought.
Smith’s speech was endorsed by 6 other Republicans although critics called her “Moscow Maggie” and McCarthy dismissed her and her supporters as “Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.” But one newspaper declared, “By one act of political courage, [Smith has] justified a lifetime in politics.” And one admiring politician (Bernard Baruch) claimed that if a man had given the speech “he would be the next President.”