White Freedom vs. Black Slavery: Johnson Hooper’s Humor and Worldview

In Some Adventures of Simon Suggs, Johnson Hooper uses his fictional newspaper editor “Johns” and fictional candidate “Suggs” as foils for his own contradictory nature. Johanna Nicol Shields examines this in her article “ A Sadder Simon Suggs: Freedom and Slavery in the Humor of Johnson Hooper.” Hooper himself, says Shields, experienced both sides of the Johns/Suggs dichotomy; as a young man, he was Suggs, Southern born, Southern bred, looking for his fortune in any way possible, looking toward the West. He was also the editor, the Western gentleman.
Johnson Hooper’s dual nature, as explored in Simon Suggs, enables his humor to deal with the story of white freedom; of Southern scions’ freedom from geographical lines as the Western frontier opened. In this adventure, however, the black characters are pawns as well as foils for the white story.