Laurence Fishburne

Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me

I will better be able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, well, 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 kindly and justly.

And we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time that 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 32 years and Mandy 20 years.

At $25 a month for me, $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680.

Add this, the interest for the time of our wages have been kept back.

and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor visits for me, pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.

Please send the money by Adams Express and care of V. Winters Esquire, Dayton, Ohio.

If you fail to pay us for our 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 payday 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 Millie 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 came to that than to have my girls brought to shame and violence by the wickedness of their young masters.