Introduction | Georgia Scenes | Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs | Conclusion | Southern Writers Symposium

The predominant regional awareness in Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs is southwestern. The book begins with a set of sketches in which young Simon Suggs assumes his role of trickster and confidence man, swindling his father, a slave, and his mother. Hooper presented his case for southern Whiggery and individualism through the nihilistic exploits of Suggs. His ideal southern society was ordered through the strength of individual character and social institutions that, while respecting the freedom of American society, provided a basis for social unity. By the late 1850s, Hooper endorsed secession, hoping that a southern nation could unify southern culture on a racial and cultural basis. The scenes "Simon Plays the 'Snatch' Game" and "Simon Gets a 'Soft Snap' out of His Daddy" reveal Hooper's social ideology.

Hooper portrayed the fallacy of attempting to order society solely on the basis of liberal individualism. The liberal emphasis on rational self-interest was inadequate to keep order because it distorted the nature of man. Hooper believed that the passions primarily drove human action. Many were either too ignorant to realize their own self-interest or too vicious to act rationally and morally. For Hooper, a society based completely on self-interest was anarchic. Unless human nature could be contained or directed in some way, freedom degenerated into license. Hooper noted of Suggs: "His whole ethical system lies snugly in his favourite aphorism — 'IT IS GOOD TO BE SHIFTY IN A NEW COUNTRY' — which means that it is right and proper that one should live as merrily and as comfortably as possible at the expense of others." Hooper remarked that Suggs' whole life illustrated his shiftiness. Suggs, therefore, personifies self-interest, which Hooper depicts as utter selfishness. Suggs as the confidence man teaches in a negative fashion that trust, not self-interest, is the basis of social relations.

Hooper's distrust of self-interest as the basis of social order did not make him a traditionalist by any means. He doubted that the traditional order could contain freedom any better than liberalism. Hooper's portrait of traditional society was the opposite of Longstreet's. Whereas Longstreet saw virtue in traditional social leaders, Simon Suggs constantly exposes scions of the traditional order — religious leaders, legislators, and military leaders — as hypocrites who take advantage of those willing to trust in the efficacy of traditional order. The fact that Suggs escapes his scams largely unscathed or unpunished reveals Hooper's doubts about traditional conservatism's answers to the problems of modern freedom.

Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs begins as a satire of the traditional order. The first two chapters, "Simon Plays the 'Snatch Game'" and "Simon Gets a 'Soft Snap' out of His Daddy," tell about Suggs' move to the frontier. Hooper introduced Suggs as "a miracle of shrewdness" who possessed "that tact which enables man to detect the soft spots in his fellow, and to assimilate himself to whatever company he may fall in with." The story starts with seventeen-year-old Suggs playing cards with a black boy named Bill. Suggs' father Jedediah, "an old 'hard shell' Baptist preacher," exemplifies a traditional source of authority. Hooper noted that Jedediah Suggs," though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious." He "reared his boys . . . according to the strictest requisitions of the moral law." Simon, however, adopted bad habits, like playing cards, whenever Jedediah was absent. Hooper refused to wax nostalgic in his portrayal of the traditional order. Rather, hypocrisy and corruption had tainted traditional forms of authority, a point Simon Suggs revealed.

As Jedediah Suggs, armed with hickory switches, approaches the two boys, Simon grabs the pot, over Bill's protests, and pockets the cards. Jedediah begins to whip Bill for his laziness and then notices the jack of diamonds, which Simon had been sitting upon in an effort to cheat Bill. Jedediah realizes that the two boys had been playing cards and decides that both need a beating. The first chapter ends with traditional authority reestablished. Jedediah, though maligned by Hooper for his greed, has yet to display any weaknesses. He prepares to use coercion in order to preserve the traditional values of hard work, responsibility, and morality.

The second chapter opens with Simon trying to devise an escape while watching his father mercilessly beat Bill. Simon contemplates striking his father, but realizes that his brother Ben, who is plowing the adjoining field, would help Jedediah, leaving Simon outnumbered. Jedediah finishes with Bill and approaches Simon. Simon remonstrates with his father, telling him that a whipping would not deter him from his plan to make his living by playing cards. Jedediah replies that "all card-players, and chicken-fighters, and horse-racers go to hell," but the fear of eternal damnation does not change Simon's mind. Simon tells his father that a local man, Bob Smith, had seen Simon play cards, taught him a few tricks, and praised his deftness at cards. Jedediah, who thinks himself better and more knowledgeable than Smith, agrees to play a card game with Simon to demonstrate his own superiority and to reveal Simon's ineptness.

Simon gets Jedediah to place a bet on the game by appealing to his greed. If Simon cuts the Jack from the deck, his father will refrain from beating him and give him an Indian pony, Bunch. If Simon fails, he will give his father a sack of silver coins, which Jedediah greedily eyes in hopes of paying off his land. Simon gives the deck to his father to cut. Jedediah tries to cheat by moving some of the cards, but Simon, looking over his father's shoulder, catches the move and by sleight of hand cuts a jack anyway. His father is devastated. Simon then uses religious rhetoric to humiliate his father by saying that his victory was "predestinated." Jedediah, not realizing Simon's sarcasm, agrees, "To be sure — to be sure — all fixed aforehand." Simon obtains Bunch and is "in high spirits . . . at the idea of unrestrained license in the future." As he rides off to the frontier, Suggs "roared with delight" at the last trick he had played on his mother — before leaving he had filled her pipe with gunpowder. The anarchic Suggs, representing modern freedom, has vanquished through trickery and violence the corrupt traditional order represented by his parents.

Suggs' success against traditional society formed part of Hooper's subversive message. William Lenz points out that while the reader cheers for Suggs in his trickery against his self-righteous, hypocritical father, Suggs' last trick on his mother turns the reader against him. Suggs is not Hooper's hero, but only his tool to make social points. Suggs, by attacking his parents, reveals his lack of piety. Hooper did not necessarily think that the destruction of the traditional order was always beneficial, but he believed that it fell under the weight of its own corruption. Suggs' victory and escape showed the inability of coercion and religion to order modern freedom. In the face of freedom, traditional society was incompetent. In fact, once the traditional order entertained modern ideas of freedom, it began to fall. That Hooper first attacked the traditional society in the eastern state of Georgia is significant, for the rest of the book deals with the frontier, which lacks even the rudiments of traditional society. In the first few chapters, Hooper portrayed the West as an escape from established communities. Suggs' escape to the West put traditional forms of keeping order in jeopardy, for in the face of coercion one could always flee. For Hooper the frontier represented both the home of modern freedom and the destruction of traditional society.

After refuting both liberalism and traditional conservatism through the Suggs stories, Hooper tried to find a way to preserve order in modern society without abandoning freedom or adopting the arbitrary and hypocritical authority of the traditional world. The potential for modern freedom to devolve into chaos made Hooper's task difficult. Hooper realized that the anonymity of modern society, caused by extensive social mobility, made it harder for traditional means of coercion to maintain social order. Simon Suggs often succeeded in swindling others by imitating respectable citizens such as legislators. Hooper thought that because frontier society was so fluid, personal accountability was lacking. Strong social institutions such as families, churches, and schools could solidify society and thus keep order by forming character in individuals. Ultimately, Hooper settled on the Whig solution — endorsing individual self-restraint and the role of voluntary institutions to unify men in beneficial social action.

The destruction of the national Whig Party in the early 1850s and pressing national issues of race and slavery led Hooper to embrace southern nationalism. In a February 1860 editorial, Hooper commented upon the election of the new speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. The new speaker, he charged, "is one of those who believe the African to be the equal of the Anglo-Saxon." The "unrelenting North forced him down the throats of the humble imbecile South." In November 1860 he predicted that Lincoln would free the slaves and force racial equality on the South. He continued: "In the struggle for maintaining the ascendancy of our race in the South — our home — we see no chance for victory but in withdrawing from the Union. To remain in the Union is to lose all that white men hold dear in Government." For Hooper secession was more than a constitutional question. It was also a matter of maintaining white supremacy.

Introduction | Georgia Scenes | Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs | Conclusion | Southern Writers Symposium

Published: 21 June 2004

© 2004 Adam Tate and Southern Spaces