Makers and Romance of Alabama History. B. F. Riley
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admired for his manliness and uniform courtesy, but was dreaded as an opponent. He could rise to heights of greatness, but could never sink to levels of littleness. This reputation Judge Baldwin established and maintained alike in legislative hall, the court room, and in the social circle.
His was a fertile brain and his command of a chaste and varied diction was unusual. Possessing an acute discrimination and a relish for the ludicrous, he was one of the most jovial of companions. Living at an exceptional period, and amidst conditions which often occasioned merriment to himself, he was induced to embody his impressions of the scenes about him in his famous work—“Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi.” It was a time when credit was practically without limit and when speculation proceeded on a slender financial basis, and not infrequently on no basis at all.
It was a time of wild financial experiment, and ventures of divers kinds were numerous. To withhold credit for any amount was a mortal offense, and to present a bill was an act of discourtesy, as such act carried with it the question of the honesty of the debtor. Loans were freely made by the state banks to debtors. Private banking institutions sprang up like mushrooms and with about as much solidity, the stock of such institutions consisting of real estate on mortgage, upon the faith of which notes were issued for circulation, payable in gold or silver within twelve months. The prospective realization of the latter seems not to have been thought of, nor was it cared for by the masses, so long as money was plentiful. The reaction from a condition like this, entailing endless litigation and crash on crash, is easily seen.
With a business and legal acumen, for Judge Baldwin had both, he watched with sharp interest the trend of the period, and his work, “Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi,” is a clever hit, describing the scenes attendant on the time when money was flush. With an evident relish for fun he presents the hubbub in the courts, in the places of business and elsewhere when the notes fell due. The different characters portrayed with masterly skill, the questions and answers, the indignation and consternation, the rulings of country justices, the pleas of lawyers and many other elements are vividly presented, and invariably with such a smack of real humor by Judge Baldwin that the interest is unsuspended from the outset to the close.
While there is much of the creative in the work to lend freshness and humor to the many scenes, still the book is a practical history of a most remarkable period which extended from 1833 to 1840. The work is unique in the originality of its grasp of conditions, the raciness of portraiture and in the description of the various transactions. Though at bottom veritable history, the work is throughout garbed in incomparable humor that may be read at any period with merriment.
In the same semi-serious vein in which Irving wrote his Knickerbocker History of New York, but with a much richer tang of humor, Baldwin records the doings of those rosy days which were anon merged into gloom, and it is difficult to decide in which phase of the situation one finds more real fun. He enters into no discussion, renders no opinion of his own, never moralizes, but is content to hold himself steadfastly to a description of scene and character in a manner most diverting to the reader. A work like this was not devoid of a mission, and thousands laughed while they read the record of their own stupidity and folly.
A more dignified work from the pen of Judge Baldwin was his “Party Leaders,” which embraces the records, policies and conduct of such men as Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Randolph, Clay and others. The stamp of originality is as clear in this work as in the one already commented on, while the latter reveals the possession of a vast fund of information relative to the private lives of the distinguished characters named. More than that, it displays a power of nice discrimination of character. Sharpness of analysis and felicity of parallelism of character are wrought with the finishing touch of the verbal artist, in clean, elegant English and with a dignity free from stilt or stiffness. This, too, proved to be a popular work and was eagerly sought and read throughout the country. It bears the label of the self-made scholar, the finish of the author who works first hand, and is an embodiment of finished diction and of wide research.
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