Marcus Stickney to Frederick Douglass, June 28, 1852
Lockport, June 28, 1852.
Frederick Douglass: — Dear Sir: — A dark colored man came to this village, the fore part of May, who claimed the name of H. W. Johnson, and to be the man that delivered the speech at the Court-House, in Canandaigua, published in your paper of the 15th of April. He represents himself as a fugitive, of some few years from slavery, and as an anti-slavery lecturer, and that he had a daughter now in slavery, and wanted to obtain money to purchase the freedom of his daughter. He proposed giving a lecture in this place; applied for a meeting-house, and got fifty or a hundred notices printed for his lecture, leaving time and place blank. In the meantime, he applied to many individuals for money, for the purpose of freeing his daughter; but, a few days before the meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at Rochester, he said he had received a request from Rochester, to attend the meeting of that Society, and, consequently, must defer his lecture here until after his return from Rochester; since which time he has not been seen nor heard from, in this quarter. He showed a list of contributions, before he left, amounting, as he said, to $10, and upward. I have become satisfied that his story, in relation to the Canandaigua speech, is false, and that he is an imposter, against whom the friends of freedom should be warned, and placed on their guard, by the public press.
I am, respectfully yours,
Marcus Stickney.