Honor and Violence in the Old South

Not much to review on other than the book is a good case study of the experience of blacks in the american south pre-emancipation. If you're black don't let this book get you upset at whites. Those guys are all long dead and their legacies are too. Move on.

The antebellum honor system investigated by Bertram Wyatt-Brown still existed, vestigially, as recently as 40 or 50 years ago. Southerners grew up learning some of the attitudes of their ancestors, but only a rare few still took them seriously enough to act them out -- although those few made the news with gruesome crimes. We in the newspaper business did not call them honor killings, though, because the essential factor no longer applied: The broad society didn't believe any more. This is perhaps the most valuable insight in "Honor and Violence in the Old South," that "to make one's way . . . In the antebellum South, one had to adopt the principles held sacred by the community." In a shame culture, honor is ratified by public opinion. In a guilt culture, honorable feelings arise from feeling oneself guiltless. In various retellings of prewar incidents, including a long chapter about a wife-killing in Mississippi in 1834, Wyatt-Brown shows how even leading figures who were disdainful of aspects of honor culture (dueling, for example) were forced to play along. The relevance to 21st century situations, especially in southwest Asia, will be obvious. Wyatt-Brown says "it was the threat of honor lost, no less than slavery, that led them to secession and war," a point I agree with insofar as it relates to my slave-owning ancestors. But it is harder to see how that explains why the small farmers of the South, who had neither slaves nor much honor, went off to war and fought to the last. Community feeling also was important That said, everything Wyatt-Brown says about attitudes toward public honor matches exactly what I remember from my southern boyhood. I cannot agree, however, that "the ethic of honor had Indo-European origins." Southern honor did, but other honor systems that could not have felt Indo-European influence, in Japan and Hawaii, were exactly the same. Honor is inherent in warrior societies. That made it somewhat out-of-joint in the American South, which was pacifyi ng along with most of the rest of Euro-American society (Germans excepted). The South also was becoming democratic, and democracy is poison to archaic honoir systems. This is one reason (not the only one) that George Bush's fantasy of a democratic Iraq was, and is, delusory. It also means that Wyatt-Brown is at least partly wrong to link Southern honor to slavery. True, all earlier honor societies were linked to slavery, but only because slavery was universal. Honor practices survived slavery, as the contemporary examples of England and France and the current example of the Palestinians demonstrates. Honor notions proved handy to Southern slaveholders but it was a marriage of convenience. Wyatt-Brown makes the assertion of a fundamental link but doesn't do much to develop it anyway. Wyatt-Brown categorizes Southern honor practices into different areas, and some, like obligations of hospitality and child-rearing habits, don't have anything to do with black people, s

Bertram Wyatt-Brown condensed and abridged his previous tome, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South into a more compact and less verbose study, Honor and Violence in the Old South. Wyatt-Brown's intention is to describe the culture of the pre-Civil War South, how it differed from Northern cultural values, and how such cultural differences were causative agents of the Civil War. Honor is a behavioral construct. It is best described in the negative; it comprises those activities that would prevent individuals, families, and communities from experiencing public humiliation. He also believes that violence is inherent in southern culture; in addition to the violence of slavery, was the violence of duels, gaming rituals, punishment for breaking codes of honor. Wyatt-Brown is primarily concerned with honor amongst the high brow (or the formerly high brow) of the South. The peasant class may have agreed to codes of honor and participated in ritualized violence, but it was at the instigation of or manipulation by the wealthier members of communities. Rather than writing a narrative, Wyatt-Brown writes a series of essays dealing with specific aspects of honor or violence, such as gambling, sexual honor, family, and gentility. He is especially concerned with ethics and morality that sets the South apart from the rest of the country. By perpetuating their differences, they felt psychologically alienated and therefore set themselves up for separating politically from the rest of the country. The Civil War therefore is more about honor and the shame and humiliation that would result from outsiders dictating ethics and morality upon their communities.

This is by far the finest and most lucid and readable treatment of these subjects since Cash's groundbreaking study. A must.