Controversial kids coloring book with happy US slaves - Acceptable?

[iiandyiiii]

Stanislaus posted in the Pit thread about a letter from a slave that perfectly shatters any claim that there was much of a chance that a slave was happy with his or her situation:

@Stanislaus

What a load of exculpatory bollocks. As if slaves didn’t know they were slaves. Here’s a letter(original here) from an actual former slave (not a made up person in Sage Rat’s head) to his old master who has recently offered him a position. Jourdon Anderson seems to have a pretty clear idea of what being a slave meant for him and his family and how much better he is out of it. He also has a fine line in stiletto-sharp sarcasm:

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…
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…
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…
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.

No, but sure - if you’d asked Mr Anderson on a random day how his day was, he would have said “Good”. Of course he would. If it was a day he wasn’t watching Matilda and Catherine being raped, for instance. Or being shot at by his “master”. Or had forgotten that he was being treated like cattle or cheated out of a lifetime’s earnings. “Oh sure,” he’d say. “Today was a good day”.