Southern Honor
Ethics and Behavior in the Old South
Why men in the antebellum South were prepared to kill over an insult, taken seriously as a system.
Bertram Wyatt-Brown argued that honour was not a decorative Southern affectation but the organising ethic of the antebellum South, governing duelling, slavery, family, reputation and the willingness to kill over an insult. Published in 1982 and drawing on anthropology as much as archives, it reframed a set of behaviours that earlier historians had treated as excess into a coherent and internally consistent system.
Recommended by 1 Person
Bryan Burrough
the final word on why honor mattered so much in the antebellum South that men stood ready to kill one another in defense of it.
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