The Union Army in 1864 seized the Big Spring, Tennessee plantation where a slave named Jourdan worked. Upon being set free he moved to Dayton, Ohio with his wife and children.

Shortly after the Civil War ended Jourdan was begged to return to the Tennessee plantation by the man who had kept him a slave (Colonel Patrick Henry Anderson). Allegedly business was ailing and couldn’t continue without Jourdan doing the work.

The 1865 reply Jourdan sent to Anderson went into a newspaper and was widely reprinted. He passed away more than four decades later in 1907, aged 81, never having returned to the plantation.

Here’s one example:

Here’s another, which removed the final paragraphs that diplomatically mentioned the common practice of white men raping the black daughters of their slaves

Here’s the full text version:

[Written just as he dictated it]

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.

P.S.—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.

John Oliver points out how Afghanistan’s political instability was “literally a plot point in Rambo III” from 1988, and then suggests what could have been done to improve the dialog (spoiler alert):

• Afghan: This is Afghanistan. Alexander the Great tried to conquer this country. Then Genghis Kahn. Then the British. Now Russia. […] Ancient enemy make prayer about these people. […] It says may god deliver us from the venom of the cobra, teeth of the tiger and the vengeance of the Afghan. Do you understand what this means?
• Rambo: That you guys don’t take any shit?
• Afghan: Yes, something like this.
• John as Afghan instead: Sure, but also our political system has long been defined by other countries’ imperial self interests. You understand what that means?
• John as Rambo: No, no I don’t.
• John as Afghan: Yeah, I didn’t think so. Yeah, you know what, I’m getting we’ll see you guys in roughly fifteen years.

The whole thing is worth a watch.

John’s not wrong about most of it. He nails the point that America “disastrously intervened” (going back to 1980) and has an obligation to get people out. Thus he’s right there’s a lot of responsibility.

However, he could have taken a harder look at what that responsibility means. It’s going to be more than just accepting refugees.

A new chapter is about to unfold in Afghanistan where political moderates aspire to take control back from extreme right-wing religious militias that the US extreme-right had pushed into power (Mujaheddin then Taliban).

If the US can survive the January 6th attempts to seize its own capitol in DC, perhaps it will learn how to help Afghans survive Kabul being seized by similar tribes (and have some freedom to do something about it).

Or let me put it another way, a nuclear Pakistan overrun by extremist right-wing religious militas is the kind of regional effect that the US, Russia and China aren’t going to just sit back and ignore.

Malcolm Gladwell hosts a history podcast that looks into wargaming to find the “best way to prepare for the unexpected”.

Spoiler alert: “Russia always won”.