Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s Honor and Violence in the Old South attempts to explain what the author views as a unique set of Southern behavioral mores. Southern uniqueness was not derived from its dependence upon the plantation economy and black chattel labor, nor was it the result of its climate or the national origin of the immigrants who settled the region. The South assumed its distinctive character, argues Wyatt-Brown, due to its peculiar idea of honor, and this regime required violence to enforce and uphold its tenets.
Wyatt-Brown posits three concepts which form the basis of honor. First, honor consists of an individual’s belief that he or she has “self-worth.” Next, the individual advances his or her belief before the public so that the claim may be scrutinized. Finally, honor requires the claim put forth by the individual be confirmed by the community or collective. The community’s judgment thus determines whether the individual maintains honorable status. Southern community dictated standards of good and evil, and Southerners were compelled to adhere to the “principles held sacred” by those around them or face alienation (14-15).
The Southern notion of honor differed from its Northern counterpart in the rate of change and the values which were stressed. Whereas Northern honor underwent rapid evolution in the hundred years before the Civil War, Southern honor hardly changed (18). Northern honor stressed respectability, and later, domestic and civic virtue (20). In juxtaposition Southern honor was derived from, Wyatt-Brown claims, primitive Indo-European roots which were adopted in the classical Greek, Roman, and Germano-Celtic world and mysteriously filtered down to prosper among the people of the American South (26). This “primal honor” stressed valor, particularly in defense of family; respect for community opinion of oneself; the belief that one’s appearance and behavior indicated inner worth; and “defense of male integrity and mingled fear and love of woman” (27). To be honorable also required an individual possess certain genteel traits. But even at this level, Northern and Southern views diverged. Northern gentility was synonymous with dignity, reason, sobriety, and caution, while the Southern standard expected warm-heartedness, generosity, and expressiveness (48). The Southern gentleman was to be sociable, learned (but not too greatly), and pious (41). These substantial differences meant that Northern and Southern visions of morality were entirely opposed to one another, and it was this fatal divergence, the author argues, that led to the Civil War (24).
The code of honor was not reserved merely to males, as women were expected to conform to a similar set of ideals mandating female subordination, docility, and scrupulous monogamy. While men were permitted a degree of licentiousness, female honor did not allow for similar behavior. A woman with a suspect sexual history sullied the reputation of her male relatives, thereby decreasing their honor in the eyes of Southern community (95). Cuckolded men were expected by their peers, and by political and legal authorities, to address the affront to their honor by any means necessary. State legislatures were unwilling to grant divorces unless men could demonstrate they had taken pains to correct (that is, physically reprimand) their spouses, and had acted to prevent (by force, if necessary) their offending counterpart from continuing the adulterous affair (103-5). Violence was in these examples, as in others, a recognized mechanism of restoring individual honor, and by 1861, violence would be used in a mission to restore collective, Southern honor.
Unfortunately, Wyatt-Brown’s analysis and methodology are faulty, for he relies upon too little evidence and too many unfounded leaps of logic. Honor and Violence contains no footnotes or citations of any kind, leaving the reader unable to determine the origin of the author’s evidence. Wyatt-Brown’s invented concept of “primal honor” lacks any hard evidence to sustain it, for the author traced its origins to antiquity with nary an exemplifying story, period author, or relevant historical text. Moreover, he utilizes correspondence, legal records, and family histories (which the reader cannot confirm as fact or folklore) almost uniquely from the upper crust of Southern society. His conclusion that the South had a peculiar system of honor that permeated the region is suspect, as he has evidently limited his investigation to the minority of white, wealthy planters. While it may be correct that this class maintained a particular code of honor, it is not a representative sample of the entire South, and Wyatt-Brown cannot claim Southern honor to be a geographical rule based upon this evidence alone. To distill general truths about a society, a researcher must examine the experiences of every caste within it, although granting that slaves may be excluded from this study. Instead, Wyatt-Brown began the distillation process with too little mash, that is, too small a social sample. Is it possible that yeomen conceptions of honor differed markedly from planter honor? Upcountry communities, lacking the wealthier strata of society, formed unique societies in themselves: where do they fit in? Widening the study of Southern honor may undermine Wyatt-Brown’s conclusions. Ultimately, Honor and Violence in the Old South reads more as a work of Southern anthropology than of rigorous history, but stands as a penetrating study nonetheless. ( )