Johnson openly questioned the fairness of the resulting trial. He wrote a letter to the "Charleston Courier" in June 1822 detailing an account of another previously purported slave rebellion along the border of Georgia and South Carolina. The rebellion Johnson cited had turned out to be only hearsay and resulted in the murder of an innocent man. Johnson claimed he believed the story "contained an useful moral, and might check the causes of agitation which were then operating upon the public mind" in Charleston.