Dueling Cultures, Damnable Legacies: Southern Violence and White Supremacy in the Civil War Era

by James Hill Welborn

Overview

How did white Southerners in the nineteenth century reconcile a Christian faith that instructed them to turn the other cheek with a pervasive code of honor that instructed them to do just the opposite—to demand satisfaction for perceived insults? In Edgefield, South Carolina, in the 1830s, white Southerners combined these seemingly antithetical ideals to forge a new compound: a wrathful moral ethic of righteous honor. Dueling Cultures, Damnable Legacies investigates the formation and proliferation of this white supremacist ideology that merged masculine bellicosity with religious devotion.

In 1856, when Edgefield native Preston Smith Brooks viciously beat the abolitionist Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, the ideology of righteous honor reached its apogee and took national center stage. Welborn analyzes the birth of this peculiar moral ethic in Edgefield and traces its increasing dominance across the American South in the buildup to the Civil War, as white Southerners sought to cloak a war fought in defense of slavery in the language of honor and Christian piety.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813949321
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	06/23/2023
Series:	A Nation Divided
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James Hill "Trae" Welborn III is Professor in the Department of History and Geography at Georgia College & State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Edgefield, S.C. as the Birthplace of Southern Righteous Honor
1. Honor: From Colonial Virility to Antebellum Refinement
2. Piety: The Ascent of Evangelical Protestantism
3. Righteous Honor: Merging the Ethics of Honor & Piety in the Early Antebellum Period
4. Moral Failings: Exorcising Inner Demons During the Sectional Crisis
5. The Conundrum of Slavery: Sanctioning Violence on Moral Grounds
6. 1856: Righteous Honor Triumphant
7. The Civil War & Reconstruction: Violent Conflict as Divine Contest
Epilogue: The Damnable Legacies of Righteous Honor

What People are Saying About This

Emerging Civil War

An important and timely addition to southern and Civil War era scholarship. . . . Its argument and interpretation are clear and persuasive. If one wants to better understand the mindset of many white southerners during this period, then this book will be of immense help.

Lisa Tendrich Frank

Perhaps no person epitomized the violence of the Civil War era South more than Edgefield, South Carolina’s most famous resident: Preston Brooks. In this compelling and gracefully written study, Welborn dives into the peculiar world of Brooks’s hometown to reveal a form of toxic masculinity that alternately exposed and resolved the tensions between Christian piety and Southern honor. This pervasive sense of 'righteous honor,' Welborn explains, consumed the minds and actions of elite white men far beyond Edgefield, leading them to commit acts of violence in the name of God. The prevalence of 'righteous honor' in today’s world should come as no surprise, as Welborn explains how this ethos survived the Civil War and continues to flourish in the present.

Robert Elder

In this book James Welborn makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the intersection of religion and honor culture in the antebellum South. While other scholars have often painted with a broad brush, Welborn’s rich account of the inner lives of two generations of white men in Edgefield is the first to study this relationship as lived by particular people in a particular place.

Editorial Reviews

In this book James Welborn makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the intersection of religion and honor culture in the antebellum South. While other scholars have often painted with a broad brush, Welborn’s rich account of the inner lives of two generations of white men in Edgefield is the first to study this relationship as lived by particular people in a particular place.

Robert Elder

Perhaps no person epitomized the violence of the Civil War era South more than Edgefield, South Carolina’s most famous resident: Preston Brooks. In this compelling and gracefully written study, Welborn dives into the peculiar world of Brooks’s hometown to reveal a form of toxic masculinity that alternately exposed and resolved the tensions between Christian piety and Southern honor. This pervasive sense of 'righteous honor,' Welborn explains, consumed the minds and actions of elite white men far beyond Edgefield, leading them to commit acts of violence in the name of God. The prevalence of 'righteous honor' in today’s world should come as no surprise, as Welborn explains how this ethos survived the Civil War and continues to flourish in the present.

Lisa Tendrich Frank