It must come up in every sin­gle argu­ment, from sophis­ti­cat­ed to sopho­moric, about the prac­ti­ca­bil­i­ty of non-vio­lent paci­fism. “Look what Gand­hi and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. were able to achieve!” “Yes, but what about Hitler? What do you do about the Nazis?” The rebut­tal implies future Nazi-like enti­ties loom­ing on the hori­zon, and though this reduc­tio ad Hitlerum gen­er­al­ly has the effect of nul­li­fy­ing any con­tin­ued ratio­nal dis­cus­sion, it’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a sat­is­fy­ing paci­fist answer to the prob­lem of naked, implaca­ble hatred and aggres­sion on such a scale as that of the Third Reich. Even Gand­hi’s own pro­pos­al sounds like a joke: in 1940, Adolph Hitler aban­dons his plans to claim Leben­sraum for the Ger­man peo­ple and to dis­place, enslave, or erad­i­cate Ger­many’s neigh­bors and unde­sir­able cit­i­zens. He adopts a pos­ture of non-vio­lence and “uni­ver­sal friend­ship,” and Ger­man forces with­draw from Czecho­slo­va­kia, Poland, Den­mark, France, agree­ing to resolve dif­fer­ences through inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence and com­mit­tee.

Hitler may have been a veg­e­tar­i­an, but that’s like­ly where any sym­pa­thy between him and Gand­hi began and end­ed.  And yet, the above is pre­cise­ly what Mahat­ma Gand­hi asked of the Fuhrer, in a let­ter dat­ed Decem­ber 24, 1940. Engaged ful­ly in the strug­gle for Indi­an inde­pen­dence, Gand­hi found him­self torn by the entry of Britain into the war against Ger­many. On the one hand, Gand­hi ini­tial­ly pledged “non­vi­o­lent moral sup­port” for the war, sens­ing an enemy–Germany–even more threat­en­ing to world peace and sta­bil­i­ty. (That stance would change in short order as the Indi­an Nation­al Con­gress revolt­ed and resigned en masse rather than par­tic­i­pate in the war). On the oth­er hand, Gand­hi did not see the British Empire as cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the Nazis. As he put it in his let­ter to Hitler, whom he address­es as “Friend” (this is “no for­mal­i­ty,” he writes, “I own no foes”): “If there is a dif­fer­ence, it is in degree. One-fifth of the human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scruti­ny.”

Gand­hi acknowl­edges the absur­di­ty of his request: “I am aware,” he writes, “that your view of life regards such spo­li­a­tions as vir­tu­ous acts.” And yet, he mar­shals a for­mi­da­ble argu­ment for non­vi­o­lence as a force of pow­er, not weak­ness, show­ing how it had weak­ened British rule: “The move­ment of inde­pen­dence has been nev­er so strong as now,” he writes, through “the right means to com­bat the most orga­nized vio­lence in the world which the British pow­er rep­re­sents”:

It remains to be seen which is the bet­ter orga­nized, the Ger­man or the British. We know what the British heel means for us and the non-Euro­pean races of the world. But we would nev­er wish to end the British rule with Ger­man aid. We have found in non-vio­lence a force which, if orga­nized, can with­out doubt match itself against a com­bi­na­tion of all the most vio­lent forces in the world. In non-vio­lent tech­nique, as I have said, there is no such thing as defeat. It is all ‘do or die’ with­out killing or hurt­ing. It can be used prac­ti­cal­ly with­out mon­ey and obvi­ous­ly with­out the aid of sci­ence of destruc­tion which you have brought to such per­fec­tion. It is a mar­vel to me that you do not see that it is nobody’s monop­oly. If not the British, some oth­er pow­er will cer­tain­ly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leav­ing no lega­cy to your peo­ple of which they would feel proud. They can­not take pride in a recital of cru­el deed, how­ev­er skill­ful­ly planned. I, there­fore, appeal to you in the name of human­i­ty to stop the war.

As an alter­na­tive to war, Gand­hi pro­pos­es an “inter­na­tion­al tri­bunal of your joint choice” to deter­mine “which par­ty was in the right.” His let­ter, Gand­hi writes, should be tak­en as “a joint appeal to you and Sign­or Mus­soli­ni…. I hope that he will take this as addressed to him also with the nec­es­sary changes.”

Gand­hi also ref­er­ences an appeal he made “to every Briton to accept my method of non-vio­lent resis­tance.” That appeal took the form of an open let­ter he pub­lished that July, “To Every Briton,” in which he wrote:

You will invite Herr Hitler and Sign­or Mus­soli­ni to take what they want of the coun­tries you call your pos­ses­sions. Let them take pos­ses­sion of your beau­ti­ful island, with your many beau­ti­ful build­ings. You will give all these, but nei­ther your souls, nor your minds. If these gen­tle­men choose to occu­py your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free pas­sage out, you will allow your­self, man, woman and child, to be slaugh­tered, but you will refuse to owe alle­giance to them.

When Gand­hi vis­it­ed Eng­land that year, he found the viceroy of colo­nial India “dumb­struck” by these requests, writes Stan­ley Wolpert in his biog­ra­phy of the Indi­an leader, “unable to utter a word in response, refus­ing even to call for his car to take the now more deeply despon­dent Gand­hi home.”

Gand­hi’s 1940 let­ter to Hitler was actu­al­ly his sec­ond addressed to the Nazi leader. The first, a very short mis­sive writ­ten in 1939, one month before the ill-fat­ed Sovi­et Non-Aggres­sion Pact, strikes a con­cil­ia­to­ry tone. Gand­hi writes that he resist­ed requests from friends to pen the let­ter “because of the feel­ing that any let­ter from me would be an imper­ti­nence,” and though he calls on Hitler to “pre­vent a war which may reduce human­i­ty to a sav­age state,” he ends with, “I antic­i­pate your for­give­ness, If I have erred in writ­ing to you.” But again, in this very brief let­ter, Gand­hi appeals to the “con­sid­er­able suc­cess” of his non­vi­o­lent meth­ods. “There is no evi­dence,” The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor remarks, “to sug­gest Hitler ever respond­ed to either of Gand­hi’s let­ters.”

As the war unavoid­ably raged, Gand­hi redou­bled his efforts at Indi­an inde­pen­dence, launch­ing the  “Quit India” move­ment in 1942, which—writes Open Uni­ver­si­ty—“more than any­thing, unit­ed the Indi­an peo­ple against British rule” and has­tened its even­tu­al end in 1947. Non-vio­lence suc­ceed­ed, improb­a­bly, against the British Empire, though cer­tain oth­er for­mer colonies won inde­pen­dence through more tra­di­tion­al­ly war­like meth­ods. And yet, though Gand­hi believed non-vio­lent resis­tance could avert the hor­rors of World War II, those of us with­out his lev­el of total com­mit­ment to the prin­ci­ple may find it dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how it might have suc­ceed­ed against the Nazis, or how it could have appealed to their total­iz­ing ide­ol­o­gy of dom­i­na­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tol­stoy and Gand­hi Exchange Let­ters: Two Thinkers’ Quest for Gen­tle­ness, Humil­i­ty & Love (1909)

Hear Gandhi’s Famous Speech on the Exis­tence of God (1931)

Watch Gand­hi Talk in His First Filmed Inter­view (1947)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

No mat­ter how long I live, the dehu­man­iz­ing insan­i­ty of racism will nev­er fail to aston­ish and amaze me. Not only does it vis­it great phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal vio­lence upon its vic­tims, but it leaves those who embrace it unable to feel or rea­son prop­er­ly. Con­tem­po­rary exam­ples abound in excess, but many of the most egre­gious come from the peri­od in U.S. his­to­ry when an entire class of peo­ple was deemed prop­er­ty, and allowed to be treat­ed any way their own­ers liked. In such a sit­u­a­tion, odd­ly, many slave mas­ters thought of them­selves as humane and benev­o­lent, and thought their slaves well-treat­ed, though they would nev­er have trad­ed places with them for any­thing.

One such exam­ple of this bewil­der­ing log­ic comes from a let­ter written—or dic­tat­ed, rather—by a man named Jor­dan Ander­son (or some­times Jour­dan Ander­son), pic­tured above: a man enslaved to one Colonel Patrick Hen­ry Ander­son in Big Spring, Ten­nessee. When he was freed from sub­jec­tion in 1864, Jor­dan moved to Ohio, found work—was paid for it—and set­tled down for the next 40 years to raise his chil­dren with his wife Aman­da. As Allen G. Breed and Hil­lel Ital­ie write, “he lived qui­et­ly and would like­ly have been for­got­ten, if not for a remark­able let­ter to his for­mer mas­ter pub­lished in a Cincin­nati news­pa­per short­ly after the Civ­il War.”

As did many for­mer slave own­ers, Colonel Ander­son found that he could not keep up his hold­ings after los­ing his cap­tive labor force. Des­per­ate to save his prop­er­ty, he had the temer­i­ty to write to Jor­dan and ask him to return and help bring in the har­vest. We do not, it seems, have the Colonel’s let­ter, but we can sur­mise from Jordan’s response what it contained—promises, as the for­mer slave writes, “to do bet­ter for me than any­body else can.” We can also sur­mise, giv­en Jordan’s sar­don­ic ref­er­ences, that the for­mer mas­ter may have shot at him—and that some­one named “Hen­ry” intend­ed to shoot him still. We can sur­mise that the Colonel’s sons may have raped Jordan’s daugh­ters, Matil­da and Cather­ine, giv­en the har­row­ing descrip­tion of them “brought to shame by the vio­lence and wicked­ness of their young mas­ters.”

And, of course, we know for cer­tain that Jor­dan received no rec­om­pense for his many years of hard work: “there was nev­er any pay-day for the negroes,” he writes, “any more than for the hors­es and cows.” Despite all this—and it is beyond my com­pre­hen­sion why—Colonel Ander­son expect­ed that his for­mer slave would return to help prop up the fail­ing plan­ta­tion. On this score, Jor­dan pro­pos­es a test of the Colonel’s “sin­cer­i­ty.” Tal­ly­ing up all the wages he and his wife were owed for their com­bined 52 years of work, less “what you paid for our cloth­ing” and doctor’s vis­its, he presents his for­mer own­er with a bill for “eleven thou­sand six hun­dred and eighty dol­lars” and an address to which he can mail the pay­ment. “If you fail to pay us for faith­ful labors in the past, we can have lit­tle faith in your promis­es in the future,” he writes. You can read the full letter—which appeared at Let­ters of Note—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 Ander­son.

Sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans have researched the authen­tic­i­ty of Jordan’s dic­tat­ed let­ter and the his­tor­i­cal details of his life in Ten­nessee and Ohio. As Kot­tke report­ed, a man named David Gal­braith found infor­ma­tion about Jordan’s life after the letter’s pub­li­ca­tion, includ­ing ref­er­ences to him and his wife and fam­i­ly in the 1900 Ohio cen­sus. Kot­tke pro­vides many addi­tion­al details about Jordan’s post-slav­ery life and that of his many chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, and the Dai­ly Mail has pho­tographs of the for­mer Ander­son plan­ta­tion and Jor­dan Anderson’s mod­ern-day descen­dants. They also quote his­to­ri­an Ray­mond Win­bush, who tracked down some of the Colonel’s descen­dants still liv­ing in Big Spring.

Colonel Ander­son, it seems, was forced to sell the land after his plea to Jor­dan failed, and he died not long after at age 44. (Jor­dan Ander­son died in 1907 at age 81.) “What’s amaz­ing,” says Win­bush, “is that the cur­rent liv­ing rel­a­tives of Colonel Ander­son are still angry at Jor­dan for not com­ing back.” Yet anoth­er exam­ple of how the ignominy of the past, no mat­ter how much we’d pre­fer to for­get it, nev­er seems very far behind us at all.

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Watch Vet­er­ans of The US Civ­il War Demon­strate the Dread­ed Rebel Yell (1930)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness