First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1983"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references and index. Access is available to the Yale community.
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, hailed in The Washington Post as "a work of enormous imagination and enterprise" and in The New York Times as "an important, original book," Southern Honor revolutionized our understanding of the antebellum South, revealing how Southern men adopted an ancient honor code that shaped their society from top to bottom. Using legal documents, letters, diaries, and newspaper columns, Wyatt-Brown offers fascinating examples to illuminate the dynamics of Southern life throughout the antebellum period. He describes how Southern whites, living chiefly in small, rural, agrarian surroundings, in which everyone knew everyone else, established the local hierarchy of kinfolk and neighbors according to their individual and familial reputation. By claiming honor and dreading shame, they controlled their slaves, ruled their households, established the social rankings of themselves, kinfolk, and neighbors, and responded ferociously against perceived threats. The shamed and shameless sometimes suffered grievously for defying community norms. Wyatt-Brown further explains how a Southern elite refined the ethic. Learning, gentlemanly behavior, and deliberate rather than reckless resort to arms softened the cruder form, which the author calls "primal honor." In either case, honor required men to demonstrate their prowess and engage in fierce defense of individual, family, community, and regional reputation by duel, physical encounter, or war. Subordination of African-Americans was uppermost in this Southern ethic. Any threat, whether from the slaves themselves or from outside agitation, had to be met forcefully. Slavery was the root cause of the Civil War, but, according to Wyatt-Brown, honor pulled the trigger. Featuring a new introduction by the author, this anniversary edition of a classic work offers readers a compelling view of Southern culture before the Civil War.
Hailed as a classic by reviewers and historians, Bertram Wyatt-Brown's Southern Honor now appears in abridged form under the title Honor and Violence in the Old South. Winner of a Phi Alpha Theta Book Award and a Jefferson Davis Memorial Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, this is the first major reinterpretation of Southern life and custom since W.J, Cash's The Mind of the South. It explores the meaning and expression of the ancient code of honor as whites—both slaveholders and non-slaveholders—applied it to their lives. Wyatt-Brown ranges widely—covering topics such as childbearing, marital patterns, duelling, slave discipline, and lynch-law—to discover the role of honor in the psyche of white Southerners.
From Edgar Allan Poe’s “dark forebodings” to Kate Chopin’s lifelong struggle with sorrow and loss, depression has shadowed southern letters. This beautifully realized study explores the defining role of melancholy in southern literature from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth, when it evolved into modernist alienation. While creativity and depression have been linked throughout Western history, Bertram Wyatt-Brown argues that nineteenth-century southern culture was hospitable to a distinctive melancholy that impelled literary production. Deeply marked by high death rates, social dread, and bitter defeat, white southerners imposed a climate of parochial pride, stifling conventions of masculinity, social condescension, and mistrust of intellectualism. Many writers experienced a conscious or unconscious alienation from the prevailing social currents. And they expressed emotional turmoil in and through their writing. Hearts of Darkness develops original insights into the lives and creative impulses of both major and more obscure writers. Discussing individuals as diverse as William Gilmore Simms, Mark Twain, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Sidney Lanier, and Ellen Glasgow, Wyatt-Brown identifies a close association between creativity and psychological distress. This connection helps to explain southern literary engrossment with defeat and violence—together with a disposition for the romantic, gothic, and grotesque styles—well before William Faulkner and the male Southern Renaissance. Wyatt-Brown also finds that the first authors to break away from the sentimental modes to explore new psychological terrain were women whose depression ironically furnished them with critical dispassion. Imaginative detachment in writers such as Willa Cather enabled them to create luminous characters and settings while heralding literary modernism. A major reinterpretation of the South’s fertile literary culture, Hearts of Darkness intensifies our regard for both southern writers and the fruits of pen and paper.
In this culminating work of a long and distinguished career, historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown looks at the theme of honor—a subject on which he was the acknowledged expert—and places it in a broader historical and cultural context than ever before. Wyatt-Brown begins with the contention that honor cannot be understood without considering the role of humiliation, which not only sets victor apart from vanquished but drives the search for vindication that is integral to notions of honor. The American conception of honor is further deepened by issues of race. The author turns to the slave South to show how white and black concepts of honor differed from and contradicted each other, illuminating honor’s elusive but powerful role in our society. He then goes on to explore these themes within a wide range of military and political contexts, from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm, providing new insights on how honor drove decision making during many defining events in our history that continue to reverberate in the American mind.
Extending his investigation into the ethical life of the white American South beyond what he wrote in Southern Honor (1982), Bertram Wyatt-Brown explores three major themes in southern history: the political aspects of the South's code of honor, th
Although the novels of Walker Percy represent some of the most prominent work in 20th-century Southern fiction, the Percy family itself has a history that is arguably as compelling as anything he could have created. Behind Percy's prose lurks a legacy of wealth, literary accomplishment, political leadership, depression, and suicide that spans two centuries. In this compelling biography, Wyatt-Brown skilfully combines intensive research and telling insights to produce the unforgettable story of this gifted family. 48 halftones.
Many scholars, according to Bertram Wyatt-Brown, have mistakenly attributed the coming of the Civil War solely to the slaveholding South’s determination to retain black bondage as a means of economic and political advantage. That view, he maintains, too readily diminishes the ethical dynamics involved in the chasm between antebellum North and South. In Yankee Saints and Southern Sinners, Wyatt-Brown explores in a series of wide-ranging essays the ethical differences—epically with regard to honor, liberty, and slavery—that divided the two regions of the country. Slavery was, of course, the crucial issue in the conflict, but such moral concerns as honor and shame, conscience and guilt were inextricably a part of the dispute as well. Northerners, under abolitionist and antislavery guidance, came to regard slavery as a violation of American conscience and understandings of individuality, personal liberty and civic responsibility, whereas soothers adhered to an ethical scheme based on traditional concepts of honor. Wyatt-Brown suggests that to most southern whites the rubric of honor was much more than a matter of duels and political posturing. It was instead an integral part of the moral and cultural heritage of the region, affecting a variety of social relationships. Sometimes the dictates of honor were even more powerful than the Christian morality that nearly all Americans espoused. Using Stanley Elkins’ antislavery interpretation as a point of departure, Wyatt-Brown devotes the first part of the book to the abolitionists’ dynamic relationship to evangelical culture in which conscience, implanted in childhood, became the primary ethical code guiding reformers. In the most dramatic and probing chapter in this section, he shows how the violent “antinomian” John Brown capitalized on the tensions between Christian conscience and primal manhood to gratify his own and his fellow countrymen’s desire for righteous glory, albeit for noble ends. The second half of the book reveals the contrasting ethical spirit of the South, as explained in W.J. Cash’s Mind of the South. After placing the proslavery argument in the context of evangelical and, later, secular “modernity,” Wyatt-Brown analyzes the ethical texture of secessionism in one of the book’s most original and intriguing arguments. Differences over the meaning and applicability of honor and shame, he contends, played a major part in the South’s struggle in 1860 and 1861 over secession and the North’s response to it. Making abundant use of anthropological, sociological, and psychological insights, Bertram Wyatt-Brown offers here an interpretation of the causes of the Civil war that is both provocative and persuasive.
Few families in America can claim so many gifted writers as the Percys. This examines the role of gender and family history in the writings of this exceptional lineage.
Lewis Tappan (1788--1873), founder of the Journal of Commerce and the nation's first credit rating firm, is probably best known for his business accomplishments. His greatest achievement, however, was not finance but freedom. In the 1830s, he and his wealthy brother Arthur underwrote and inspired the Manhattan headquarters of the American Anti-Slavery Society and founded many other organizations to promote freedom, faith, and racial tolerance. As prominent historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown demonstrates in this fascinating portrait, Tappan contributed much more to the cause of liberty and equality than has yet been acknowledged.
Although the novels of Walker Percy represent some of the most prominent work in 20th-century Southern fiction, the Percy family itself has a history that is arguably as compelling as anything he could have created. Behind Percy's prose lurks a legacy of wealth, literary accomplishment, political leadership, depression, and suicide that spans two centuries. In this compelling biography, Wyatt-Brown skilfully combines intensive research and telling insights to produce the unforgettable story of this gifted family. 48 halftones.
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, hailed in The Washington Post as "a work of enormous imagination and enterprise" and in The New York Times as "an important, original book," Southern Honor revolutionized our understanding of the antebellum South, revealing how Southern men adopted an ancient honor code that shaped their society from top to bottom. Using legal documents, letters, diaries, and newspaper columns, Wyatt-Brown offers fascinating examples to illuminate the dynamics of Southern life throughout the antebellum period. He describes how Southern whites, living chiefly in small, rural, agrarian surroundings, in which everyone knew everyone else, established the local hierarchy of kinfolk and neighbors according to their individual and familial reputation. By claiming honor and dreading shame, they controlled their slaves, ruled their households, established the social rankings of themselves, kinfolk, and neighbors, and responded ferociously against perceived threats. The shamed and shameless sometimes suffered grievously for defying community norms. Wyatt-Brown further explains how a Southern elite refined the ethic. Learning, gentlemanly behavior, and deliberate rather than reckless resort to arms softened the cruder form, which the author calls "primal honor." In either case, honor required men to demonstrate their prowess and engage in fierce defense of individual, family, community, and regional reputation by duel, physical encounter, or war. Subordination of African-Americans was uppermost in this Southern ethic. Any threat, whether from the slaves themselves or from outside agitation, had to be met forcefully. Slavery was the root cause of the Civil War, but, according to Wyatt-Brown, honor pulled the trigger. Featuring a new introduction by the author, this anniversary edition of a classic work offers readers a compelling view of Southern culture before the Civil War.
Many scholars, according to Bertram Wyatt-Brown, have mistakenly attributed the coming of the Civil War solely to the slaveholding South’s determination to retain black bondage as a means of economic and political advantage. That view, he maintains, too readily diminishes the ethical dynamics involved in the chasm between antebellum North and South. In Yankee Saints and Southern Sinners, Wyatt-Brown explores in a series of wide-ranging essays the ethical differences—epically with regard to honor, liberty, and slavery—that divided the two regions of the country. Slavery was, of course, the crucial issue in the conflict, but such moral concerns as honor and shame, conscience and guilt were inextricably a part of the dispute as well. Northerners, under abolitionist and antislavery guidance, came to regard slavery as a violation of American conscience and understandings of individuality, personal liberty and civic responsibility, whereas soothers adhered to an ethical scheme based on traditional concepts of honor. Wyatt-Brown suggests that to most southern whites the rubric of honor was much more than a matter of duels and political posturing. It was instead an integral part of the moral and cultural heritage of the region, affecting a variety of social relationships. Sometimes the dictates of honor were even more powerful than the Christian morality that nearly all Americans espoused. Using Stanley Elkins’ antislavery interpretation as a point of departure, Wyatt-Brown devotes the first part of the book to the abolitionists’ dynamic relationship to evangelical culture in which conscience, implanted in childhood, became the primary ethical code guiding reformers. In the most dramatic and probing chapter in this section, he shows how the violent “antinomian” John Brown capitalized on the tensions between Christian conscience and primal manhood to gratify his own and his fellow countrymen’s desire for righteous glory, albeit for noble ends. The second half of the book reveals the contrasting ethical spirit of the South, as explained in W.J. Cash’s Mind of the South. After placing the proslavery argument in the context of evangelical and, later, secular “modernity,” Wyatt-Brown analyzes the ethical texture of secessionism in one of the book’s most original and intriguing arguments. Differences over the meaning and applicability of honor and shame, he contends, played a major part in the South’s struggle in 1860 and 1861 over secession and the North’s response to it. Making abundant use of anthropological, sociological, and psychological insights, Bertram Wyatt-Brown offers here an interpretation of the causes of the Civil war that is both provocative and persuasive.
In this culminating work of a long and distinguished career, historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown looks at the theme of honor—a subject on which he was the acknowledged expert—and places it in a broader historical and cultural context than ever before. Wyatt-Brown begins with the contention that honor cannot be understood without considering the role of humiliation, which not only sets victor apart from vanquished but drives the search for vindication that is integral to notions of honor. The American conception of honor is further deepened by issues of race. The author turns to the slave South to show how white and black concepts of honor differed from and contradicted each other, illuminating honor’s elusive but powerful role in our society. He then goes on to explore these themes within a wide range of military and political contexts, from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm, providing new insights on how honor drove decision making during many defining events in our history that continue to reverberate in the American mind.
Hailed as a classic by reviewers and historians, Bertram Wyatt-Brown's Southern Honor now appears in abridged form under the title Honor and Violence in the Old South. Winner of a Phi Alpha Theta Book Award and a Jefferson Davis Memorial Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, this is the first major reinterpretation of Southern life and custom since W.J, Cash's The Mind of the South. It explores the meaning and expression of the ancient code of honor as whites—both slaveholders and non-slaveholders—applied it to their lives. Wyatt-Brown ranges widely—covering topics such as childbearing, marital patterns, duelling, slave discipline, and lynch-law—to discover the role of honor in the psyche of white Southerners.
Lewis Tappan (1788--1873), founder of the Journal of Commerce and the nation's first credit rating firm, is probably best known for his business accomplishments. His greatest achievement, however, was not finance but freedom. In the 1830s, he and his wealthy brother Arthur underwrote and inspired the Manhattan headquarters of the American Anti-Slavery Society and founded many other organizations to promote freedom, faith, and racial tolerance. As prominent historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown demonstrates in this fascinating portrait, Tappan contributed much more to the cause of liberty and equality than has yet been acknowledged.
Extending his investigation into the ethical life of the white American South beyond what he wrote in Southern Honor (1982), Bertram Wyatt-Brown explores three major themes in southern history: the political aspects of the South's code of honor, th
Few families in America can claim so many gifted writers as the Percys. This examines the role of gender and family history in the writings of this exceptional lineage.
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