Research authenticates famed letter by ex-slave to old master

This image obtained by The Associated Press shows the beginning of a letter dated Aug. 7, 1865 from Jordan Anderson to his former master, Patrick H. Anderson, published in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper. Treasured as a social document, praised as a masterpiece of satire, Anderson's letter has been anthologized and published all over the world. Historians teach it, and the letter turns up occasionally on a blog or on Facebook. Humorist Andy Borowitz read the letter recently and called it, in an email to The Associated Press, "something Twain would have been proud to have written." (AP Photo)