A letter by a slave~Jane Giles 14/3/09

Jane Giles
Jane Giles was a slave belonging to Margaret Preston of Lexington. While on a trip to New York, Jane ran away. Later she wrote to her former mistress to explain why. Another letter tells us that life as a free African American during these times was not comfortable. These letters were not written during the Civil War, but six years before.

Jane Giles (New York) to Margaret Wickliffe Preston
(Washington D.C.), February 8th 1854

Mrs William Preston
Madam. I take this oppertunity to wright you these few lines to inform you that I am well at this time and I hope you are the same. Dear madam I sopose you wonder why that I left you. Well I will tell you the Reason one Reason was because you Parted me and my housbond as tho we had no feeling and the Next Reason was because you accused me of stealing Money and I was not gilty of it but because I am coulard You sopose that I have not got any feelings I have feelings thank god as well as you and I sopose you feel the Loss of me as much as I do the loss of you. I worked for you when I was with you and dear madam I am working for my Sealf and let me inform you that I Loved my housbond as well as you do yours if I never see him again in this world but I am in hopes to meet him in Haven
I sopose you will call this impedance But I do not I have nothing Against Mr. Preston he treated me well he would not have sent my husbound away had it not been for you and I would have been yet with you. But Never mind Every boddy must have trubble
I Remane Yours
Jane Giles (Box 49)

Source from:
http://www.ket.org/civilwar/aamerican.html#top#top

The above is a letter from a slave to her mistress. After reading the letter, I can infer that she is actually a polite person from the way she addresses her mistress who mistreated her. She also forgives her mistress and this action is actually very magnanimous.
I say that she is very polite because she doesn’t just address her previous mistress by her name. Throughout the letter, she uses the term “dear madam”. This way of addressing was very polite as people only use “dear” or “madam” throughout the whole letter when writing to someone he or she is related to or respect. However this slave was writing to her previous mistress who mistreated her by separating her husband and her. The evidence “ Parted me and my housbond” shows this.

Secondly I say that she was magnanimous because of the fact that she actually wrote to her mistress and at the end of the letter, she forgave her mistress for mistreating her by saying “But Never mind Every boddy must have trubble”. What her mistress have done to her was very horrible. Other than slaving her and her husband, she also separated them and left each of them with no emotional comfort.

Also, her mistress accused her of stealing money although she was not guilty of it. In her letter she wrote that her mistress accused her for stealing money because she was a black. This shows the amount of racism there was in those days. The phrase “you accused me of stealing Money and I was not gilty of it but because I am coulard” shows it. Another way that shows her mistress mistreats her is that she says in her letter that her mistress thinks she has no feelings. The phrase “You sopose that I have not got any feelings” shows this. But yet despite all these treachery done to her, she forgave her mistress by saying everyone has mistakes.

In conclusion, I think that some slaves might forgive their white masters because like Jane, she thinks that everyone makes mistakes. Whereas there might be some who think that the white masters do not know what they were doing were wrong, but just following the trend. On the other hand, there would definitely be some people who would hate the whites for doing this to their ancestors or in general do that to their race.

Tan Yong Yao (2p3-26)

P.S. The grammatical error in the letter was originally like this as it was written by a slave.