A Letter From a Slave to Former Owner

From the Civil War Day By Day, UNC Libraries blog from October 9, 2013.

The letter was dated 9 October 1863, 150 years earlier and of interest. It was sent by Henry Lowndes, a former slave, to his former owners in North Carolina to Mrs. T.A. Coffin, to update things that had happened to him and his family since they had gone north.

Unfortunately, it didn't say the circumstances of his being in the north. Had he runaway? Had he been sent there before the war? It begins "Your honorable servant Henry, would take the opportunity to send you a few lines...."

Anyway, you just don't think of slaves as writing (wasn't it strictly illegal to teach a slave to write?).  And, why would he be writing to his former owner?

Interesting letter. --Old Secesh