Samuel J. May to Frederick Douglass, June 3, 1857
For Frederick Douglass' Paper
LETTER FROM REV. S. J. MAY.
Mr. EDITOR: – I have been absent from home nearly the whole of the last four weeks; and not until this evening have I seen the strange letter, addressed to me by Mr. J. W. Loguen, in your paper of May 8th. He has put a construction upon the card. I signed with Mr. William Brown, which the words of that card do not require; and the circumstances of the case, known to Mr. Loguen, did not warrant. I had published some days before, in the Northern Independent and in some of the Syracuse papers, a letter, which sufficiently exposed my displeasure at the course pursued by Mr. Brown; and my distrust of him as a man. I have never recalled any thing, which that letter implied. All that it was incumbent upon me to do, as a member of the Syracuse Fugitive Aid Society, was to get Mr. Brown off our tracks, out of the field in which we are operating. If any of my fellow citizens choose to keep up an Association, and keep him their Agent, for procuring and expending funds for the relief of fugitives after they get into Canada; for the assistance of those who may wish to go to Africa, I suppose that neither I nor Mr. Loguen has any power to prevent, nor right to interfere with them.
Mr. Brown, in the interview I had with him agreed to relinquish the field in question entirely to Syracuse Fugitive Aid Society, to the suppress the report he had published of the doings of the Society, of which he was the agent or else to cut out of every copy he might issue, that portion, which represented the African Aid Society as affording shelter and assistance to fugitives on their way to Canada; and thereafter to confine himself and the appropriations of his society to those, who have become residents in Canada, or to those, who may wish to emigrate to Africa. Moreover, he gave me to understand, that he should leave this part of the country altogether, and probably engage in some other business. And I believed, that his withdrawal would be tantamount to the dissolution of the African Aid Society. Moreover he returned to me the commission I had very unwisely given him twelve months before; and which had led us
into so much difficulty with him.
In view of all these concessions, I thought
it would be inexpedient to keep up our con-
flict with him; and so agreed to an amicable
adjustment of the ma[tter?] on the conditions
above stated.
Now I suppose one may make an amicable
adjustment of a difficulty with a man, without
thereby giving any endorsement to his charac-
ter, or implying any approval of his past con-
duct, or any recommendation of his future
course. I intended to leave Mr. Brown and
his "African Aid Society," to stand before the
community on their own merits. What they
were it had been, I thought, already sufficiently
shown to the public by myself and others.
Yours truly,
SAMUEL J. MAY
SYRACUSE, June 3, 1857.