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.
Read the rest. The context is a former slave owner actually tracked down a slave who had run away and become emancipated, and now after the Civil War was writing to him to ask him to return to former owner's farm in Tennessee to work.
The nuance of sarcasm is simply wonderful here - very slight, but still there.
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