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Remarking that he had heard there was a negro shot last night. The student answered in the affirmative adding and you are suspected of having shot him - Johnson made no reply to this but left the room and a short time afterwards the town - 

None of the witnesses who were present at the time of the shooting would swear to Johnson as the man who fired the shot, but they all concurred in the statement that the man who fired the shot was a tall spare man - (Johnson is a tall spare man) I am much inclined to think the colored men who testified before the court were afraid to tell all they knew, or to identify Johnson in open court even were they able to do so - the (deceased) Thompson in his dying testamony stated that the man who shot him had black whiskers a thing I have no hesitation in saying nature has not yet bestowed upon Johnson

Yet the dying man as I am informed was not wholy concious - and not in a condition to give any clear testamony

The counsel for the prisoner urged upon the court the necessity of pasing such a decision in the case as would set a precident for the government of future cases of a similar character and that would show, "This lower and inferior race of beings that they must not arouse the passions of the white man or provoke him to anger by words or blows" reading opinions of celebrated lawyers to show that impudence from a colored man was as 
  
 

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