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Joseph Gault (1794–1879)
- University of Missouri Press
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207 Joseph Gault (1794–1879) Joseph Gault is an unfamiliar name in the genre of Old Southwest humor, having published locally in Marietta, Georgia, only one book containing humorous material of the frontier variety, Reports of Decisions in the Justice’s Courts in the State of Georgia, from the Year of Our Lord 1820 to 1846, a collection that its loftysounding title suggests is a compilation of serious accounts of cases in the justices of the peace court system in Georgia. The title is deceiving, for Gault’s Reports, comprising thirty-seven sketches, is a burlesque, a valuable and amusing reservoir of sometimes lively, bizarre, and entertaining renderings of the proceedings that transpired in the justice-of-the-peace courts system with which Gault was associated and of various other anecdotes he witnessed or heard. Another clue to the humorously satiric focus of Gault’s Reports may be found in the front matter. In the dedicatory preface to the 1846 edition to his fellow justice of the peace James McGee of Murray County, Georgia, Gault affects a tone of ironic mockery, indicating that his book contains a “large body of the most interesting and best authenticated cases tried in the Justice’s Courts. . . . I consider them as being the last elegant hifalluten touch to the Judiciary system of our State.” And in the preface, he notes that Georgia has no record of the cases tried in justices’ courts, and in publishing his book, he hopes to fill this void.Along with his reports, Gault points out, half facetiously,“I have mingled some characteristic anecdotes, in order to relieve the tedium of legal detail and judicial narrative—interpolating the abstruse learning of the Justices’ Courts with brilliant specimens of professional literature; and blending the hilarity of the convivial board with the soberness of the law.” Unlike many other antebellum humorists who published book-length collections of their sketches and tales, Gault did not initially publish any of his humorous anecdotes about the lower court system in newspapers. Nor were any reports of anecdotes reprinted in Porter’s Spirit of the Times. Yet Gault’s Reports went through four editions in his lifetime, and two other editions were published after his death, an indication that his book seemed to have some popular appeal. Facts about Gault’s life are few. He was born in the Union District of South Carolina on May 14, 1794. Before he married and moved to Georgia, he had 208 Southern Frontier Humor been a teacher briefly in the Packolet River section of South Carolina. Shortly after Cobb County was established from former Indian territory in 1833, Gault started a law practice and in 1836 established a justice of the peace court in the county. Gault, in fact, became a justice of the peace himself and served in that capacity until 1860. Interestingly, Gault also achieved acclaim as a runner and often competed in foot races, both in South Carolina and Georgia. Largely forgotten, some of Gault’s Reports were published in Studies in American Humor and the Mississippi Quarterly in 1986 and 1998, respectively, by Stephen Meats; but before Meats’s recovery work, there were few appraisals of Gault or of his Reports. Writing in 1935, Sarah Temple noted that Gault’s Reports “reveal not only the personality of the author, but a picture of his times in which he lived. . . . He damned where damning was due; he praised where he deemed praise merited. That he escaped the penalties of the law of libel, or in earlier days a bullet from the gun of one of the individuals whom he did not hesitate to call by name, must be considered a tribute to his powers and the truth of the cases which he recited.” Gault was an accomplished raconteur, and the significance of Reports of Decisions in the Justice’s Courts ultimately lies, according to Stephen Meats, in his “portraits of backwoods attorneys and justices of the peace [that] are entertaining and have an authentic ring to them. His accounts of the roughand -tumble chaos of the justices’ courts are both funny and horrifying.” Texts: Reports of Decisions in Justice’s Courts, in the State of Georgia, from the Year of Our Lord 1820–1846 (Marietta, GA, 1846). “The Drunkard’s Resurrection in His Mourning Shroud,” Joseph Gault’s Fifth Edition of His Reports: Entitled A Coat of Many Arms (Americus , GA, 1902). A Constable Selling ‘Coon Skins This was a sale that took place...