The Chauvinistic Adventures of Captain Hooper

Johnson Jones Hooper’s Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs contained many things that were and still are pertinent within the south and United States such as references towards blacks and slavery. Of the many occurrences of the mid to late nineteenth century slavery was one of the most influential and important. This is why Hooper’s representation of slavery and white supremacy within his texts and his life are important and must be evaluated in order to fully understand his fiction. To describe Hooper, it would not be a fallacy to state that he was, “an inveterate racist” and frequently mentioned “the inferiority of blacks” within most of his written works (Tate 338). His belief was that slavery was essential to the advancement of the Southern economy and way of life. He thought that to lose slavery would be to, “lose all that white men hold dear in Government” and that “secession was more than a constitutional question….It was also a matter of maintaining white supremacy” (Tate 338).