Outside the courthouse in "A Point of Law" are "rich white lawyers talking to one another around cigars, the proud and powerful of the earth" (221). When this scene recurs in Go Down, Moses, the people in the group are referred to as "lawyers and judges and marshals" (69). In both texts, the critical perspective on these people seems shared by both Lucas and the narrative.
Although we never learn the name of the "commissioner" mentioned in "A Point of Law" and again in Go Down, Moses, or much else about him, we know the man who signs the indictments against Lucas and George for moonshining is a federal official - his office is in "the federal courthouse" (216), and moonshining was a federal crime.
On their way to see Judge Gowan, Edmonds, Lucas and the others pass this "oldish white man," a "deputy marshal" who "chews a toothpick and reads a Memphis paper" (221). In the next scene the Judge calls him "Henry" (222).
In The Mansion Gavin Stevens checks the deed for Meadowfill's property in "the Chancery Clerk's office" - which is the only way this official appears in the novel (367). Typically, a chancery clerk would have been elected to his position. His job would have had him collecting data and presiding over the chancery court records, which would have dealt with disputes adjudicated in the court, centering on land and contracts.
Typically, the "Chancery Clerk" mentioned by the narrator of "The Old People" would have been elected to his position (204) . His job would include collecting demographic data and presiding over the chancery court records, which mainly dealt with disputes about property and contracts adjudicated in the court. (Curiously, all mention of this person is gone from the version of the story Faulkner includes in Go Down, Moses: there the phrase is "chancery book in Jefferson," 163).
In "The Old People" and again in the chapter with that name in Go Down, Moses this man is "a full-blood Chickasaw" Indian (204, 163) and friend of Sam Fathers. He is called both Joe Baker (by the narrator of the story, 205) and Jobaker (by the narrator of the novel, 164, and by himself in both texts, 204, 163). His history is unknown. He "lived in a foul little shack at the fork of the creek" (204, 163). Living as a hermit, he hunted and fished for his livelihood.
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the crowd that watches as the coffin carrying Samuel Beauchamp is taken off the train contains a "number of Negroes and whites both" (265, 363). The Negroes include "men and women too," but the white people there are described as "idle white men and youths and small boys"; there do not seem to be any white women among the spectators (265, 363).
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, this group of "Negro undertaker's men" (265, 363) is at the train station when Samuel Beauchamp's casket arrives in Jefferson; they load it into the hearse.
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the crowd that watches as the coffin carrying Samuel Beauchamp is taken off the train contains a "number of Negroes and whites both" (265, 363). These are the "probably half a hundred Negroes, men and women too," who are there (265, 363).
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Gavin Stevens calls at the various offices and stores "about the square" and solicits funds to help pay the costs of bringing Mollie's grandson's body back to Jefferson and giving him a small funeral from "merchant and clerk, proprietor and employee, doctor and dentist and lawyer" (263) - this phrase in the novel adds "and barber" at the end (360). Some give him the "dollars and half dollars" he asks for, and some don't (265).
