There was that in the presence, bearing, and intercourse of Judge Baldwin that impressed one with his superiority, yet he was free, often even to abandon, affable, and always companionable. He made ready friends of strangers, and compelled by his bearing the highest respect of his opponents.
Living for many years in Sumter County, he yielded to the alluring reports which spread over the country in 1849 concerning the newly discovered Eldorado on the Pacific slope, and removed to California. Without trouble he fell into the rough and tumble conditions prevailing at that time in San Francisco, entered on a lucrative practice, and later was chosen by popular vote to a judgeship on the supreme bench of that state. He died in California in 1866.
JOHNSON J. HOOPER
The three most noted humorists produced by the South were Judge A. B. Longstreet, Judge J. G. Baldwin and Johnson J. Hooper. “Georgia Scenes,” the chief product of Longstreet’s humor, has been read for generations, and will continue to be. “Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi,” by Baldwin, is not a work of so popular a cast as the preceding one, but has humor of a rare flavor, and “Simon Suggs,” the inimitable work of Johnson J. Hooper—these represent the humorists named and their best work. Each of these occupies a distinct orbit of humor, and the merit of each has been long ago established.
When Hooper saw that he was to be remembered chiefly by his “Simon Suggs,” he regretted the publication, for it had in it no index to any ambition which he cherished, but was dashed off at odd moments as a mere pastime. The author desired to be remembered by something more worthy than a ridiculous little volume detailing incidents of a grotesque character and the twaddle and gossip in the phraseology of the backwoods. But if the product be one of rareness, standing apart in its uniqueness and originality, it is great and worthy, and the author deserves to be raised on a popular pedestal to be studied as a genius.
Had Hooper not written “Simon Suggs” his name would have been obscure even unto forgetfulness, and his genius unknown to the world. That which he did was apart and above the ability of others to do. Its source is not the matter to be thought of, but the production itself. At any rate, it is the work by means of which the name of Hooper will live as Alabama’s chief humorist, and as one of the prominent merry-makers of the South.
Johnson Jones Hooper was a grandnephew of William Hooper, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The subject of present discussion came from North Carolina to Alabama, and his first achievement in politics was that of his election to the solicitorship of the ninth judicial circuit, after a stubborn struggle with such men as Bowie, Latham, Spyker and Pressley. But neither the law nor politics was suited to the mind and temperament of Hooper. His being bubbled with humor, and the ridiculous was always first discerned by him, as it is by all humorists. In the quiet retreat of his humble sanctum, unannoyed by the bustle of the throng or the rasp of strident voices, was the native atmosphere of such a genius as was Hooper. It was in “The Banner” at Dadeville, then an obscure country village, that Hooper first attracted attention as a humorist. The droll scenes of the experiences of a census taker of that time, discharging his official function in the backwoods, where he encountered numerous ups and downs, were detailed in the rural paper already named, with inimitable skill.
In the retreat of the rural regions, where the first lesson learned alike by members of both sexes is that of independence and self reliance, and where is straightway resisted anyone’s interference with liberty, private affairs, and “belongings,” is the basis of a series of productions in his little periodical, which themselves would have given Hooper fame. The intrusion of a polite census taker into the cabin homes of the backwoods, where statistical information was sought about poultry, pigs, soap, cows and “garden truck,” and where the rustic dames resented such intrusion with broomsticks and pokers, afforded to this man of genius an opportunity to hit off some rare humor, and in response to his nature he did so. The scene, the actors, involving the polite efforts of the official to explain, and the garrulous replies of the doughty dames, embracing throughout the dialogue and the dialect, are depicted with the hand of the master and the skill of the artist.