Jefferson Federal Courthouse (Location Key)

Oxford, Mississippi, the town on which so much of Faulkner's Jefferson is based, is in the U.S. government's Northern District of Mississippi, and has a federal courthouse building. In Faulkner's world, the "federal courthouse in Jefferson" (216, 62) is mostly kept distinct from the county courthouse at the center of town that appears much more frequently. Although the fictions don't always make the distinction explicit, in at least three texts Faulkner shows federal criminal cases being tried or handled in the federal courthouse. Making or selling moonshine is the federal crime in "A Point of Law" and Go Down, Moses, because it evades the federal excise tax on distilled alcohol; pornography is the federal crime in The Town, because Montgomery Ward Snopes can be accused of using the federal mail to distribute it.