J[ames] R[awson] Johnson to Frederick Douglass, February 5, 1857

TO "J. C. B.," OF PHILADELPHIA.

NEWFIELD, N. Y., Feb. 5th, 1857.

DEAR FRIEND:—Why was the man given up to the slaveholders? The story of the arrest and rendition of MICHAEL BROWN, the alleged fugitive, is one full of suggestion and warning. To me it is humiliating and surprising that our honored friend DAVID PAUL BROWN, should have a son who, as Commissioner, could yeild up MICHAEL BROWN to return South, in obeyance to the demand that as the property of Mr. GATCHELL, he owed him service or labor. But the most astounding, provoking and mortifying part of the whole transaction, is revealed by a Correspondent of the New York Tribune, when he says:—"The colored persons who had evinced a deep interest in the case, conducted themselves with the utmost decorum after the rendition of the fugitive was decided upon; and under the circumstances, we cannot refrain from saying, that the handcuffing was as cruel as it was needless."

There—that will do! Senator TOOMBS will commend this "utmost decorum" of the colored people, "that this law of the land, the brotherly relation between the men of the North and the South, should be respected." If a half-dozen of the Syracuse "Jerry Rescuers" had been there—no matter what complexion, black or white—their "decorum" would have been such, that MICHAEL BROWN would not have gone into slavery. The colored people of Philadelphia were under no more obligation to sustain the great principles of LAW, by repudiating the piratical fugitive slave enactment, than were the whites.—"J. C. B.," do tell us, why was not Michael Brown rescued?

Yours,

J. R. JOHNSON.