Honor And Slavery In The Antebellum South

Parallels

To southern men, honor was everything. I dictated their standing in society, whether or not they could own slaves; it basically was a secret caste system. A man held in the highest honor experienced a good life from a social stance in the south. The honor system used in the south was related to the language used by southern gentlemen.# Honor and Slavery by Kenneth S. Greenburg attempts to explain the vernacular and customs used by men in the antebellum south. It would be hard for a person in today's society to understand the way honor was shown; it would have even been a challenge for men living in the Northern United States to understand at that time.# As Greenburg states, "Since the language of honor was the dominant language of the men who ruled the slave South, we will never understand masters, the nature of slavery, or the Civil war without first understanding that language."# To be a powerful man in the south, society also had to consider you to be an honorable man. Honor and power in the South were parallel to each other; a man with a high honor ranking was usually a prominent member of society.# The white gentlemen of the South used honor as a means for running society and it slightly resembled a monarchic society, as if a person was
born into honor whether or not they chose so. It was very important to a Southern man the family name he carried because it would prove his honor in some situations.# The biggest insult that could be given in the antebellum South was accusing an honorable man of lying.# It could be over something trivial or something serious. Either way, if a man was accused of lying, his very livelihood was being challenged. If a certain person fell out of societies favor and was not considered honorable anymore, his life would change drastically. The story of John Randolf is often told by men of the South. Greenberg talks about how John invited a man to dinner, only to forget his invitation later. When the man showed up for dinner, John had to refuse him, saying "Sir I am not at home."# This could have easily led to a duel because John was obviously lying to his unintended guest. If the man wanted to accuse John of lying and most likely challenge him to a duel all that he would have had to do was "give him the lie." It was an official way of announcing that another person was without honor because he had just lied.# Being given a lie may not sound serious to someone today but in the Old South it was a very serious accusation and it threatened the integrity of a man. Most would have preferred death to being unmasked and admitting a lie. Jefferson Davis "would kill or be killed rather than accept the affront."# To be unmasked was to have an entire life of lies exposed because it is assumed that most honorable men have lied throughout their lives. P.T. Barnum is another example of the seriousness of lying. The south did not care if his Feejee Mermaid was a fake they only cared that P.T. Barnum was lying to them about it being real.# Often times, lying resulted in a duel. Dueling was considered the proper way for two gentlemen to settle a disagreement and it also proved their honor.# However dueling was not always full of hatred and anger.# Often times duelists would exchange gifts and fire shots in the air, not at each other. This demonstrated that dueling was an honorable concept and that men were encouraged to duel because it showed that they were not afraid to die an honorable death.# Slaves were often accused of lying and thievery and they were considered to be the most dishonorable people in society.# Because of this, slaves were not allowed to duel with a gun. They were allowed to fight each other bare knuckled as long as the slave master was watching.# Greenberg describes the slaves and how they were controlled when a disagreement happened: "They were like marionettes whose reactions to insult was determined by their masters. Secondly, the slaves were not allowed to risk their lives by using weapons. The blows are made by kicking, knocking, and butting with their heads; they grab each other by their ears, and jam their heads together like sheep."#
Slaves not being allowed to "properly" duel serves as a larger statement for how Africans were viewed in terms of the honor system.
For a man to duel he had to be an accomplished and honorable man; slaves simply were not viewed this way. However, slaves had honor amongst themselves. For example, some slaves thought it honorable to die without fear of death. They would not want to give a white person the satisfaction of crying out in pain while being beaten. Also, a slave could never accuse his master of lying or he would almost always be beaten to death.# It did not matter if the master was lying because he was the one with honor. The one with honor controlled what was true and what was
not. Another central theme in Honor and Slavery revolves around the nose. Greenberg states "To deprive a Southern man of honor of his nose (with the added humiliation of having it removed by slaves) was to threaten his appearance and thus his very self." Men of the south believed that "the individuality of a man is centered on his nose.# They also felt that the nose was special because it did not come in pairs like eyes or ears. It must be important because it is a single part of the face and it is in the center. The nose was highly regarded as a sacred object.# To pull or tweak a man's nose was possibly the greatest insult that could be given, and it usually insinuated that a duel was to take place. Often, a man would give another man a lie, tweak his nose, and then call for a duel.# The book compares P.T. Barnum to Cyrano de Bergerac, two very different men from different sides of the spectrum. It talks about how P.T. Barnum would try to charge admission for a funny looking nose because it would be entertaining and result in profit. Cyrano de Bergerac would take great insult to those that made light of his "protuberance."# Perhaps the greatest fear among honorable men was being unmasked.# It was ok to live a lie so long as the liar did not get caught, or unmasked. The book describes the story of J. Marion Sims as he went to a masquerade ball dressed as a woman. He thought it would be fun to fool everyone into thinking he was a woman but he was also deathly afraid of being unmasked because this carried serious consequences in antebellum South Carolina.# While it sounds like an innocent college kid playing a prank, to people back then it implied that J. Marion Sims was a liar and often made foolery of the surrounding town folk. Also, the Sims story illustrates one of the main concepts is southern white society: "The difference between having and not having honor was the difference between having and not having power. The man of honor was the man who had the power to prevent his being unmasked…A Southern Gentleman could wear anything-even a dress or a lie- as long as he could prevent it from being removed."#
Jefferson Davis is another example of the fear of being unmasked. He was accused of dressing in his wife's clothes in order to escape the Union soldiers.# Their were many political cartoons showing Davis in a long dress with boots on while rigid and powerful looking Union soldiers pointed guns at him. However, Davis had a different view of the events, saying that he accidentally gotten his wife's shawl on while trying to exit the tent as Union soldiers arrived.# He then describes that he planned to throw the union soldier down and jump on his horse in order to fight another day. He credits his capture to his wife, saying that "his wife did not save his life; she crippled his ability to resist."# He used his wife as a scapegoat because she was a woman and could not challenge what he was saying. Jefferson Davis considered himself to be an honorable gentleman and he would never allow himself to become unmasked. Today's society is much different than that of the antebellum south in terms of honor. The Old South affiliated honor with white men that were usually rich slave owners. And truthfully, honor was in the hands of those that had power. Today, I consider honor to be much different. We measure honor by courage, resilience, and leadership, to name a few. In the Old South, money was often associated with honor. It was not a coincidence that men back then in high honor holdings were usually wealthy also. Today, money is not necessary to achieve honor. Honor is not dictated by social standings but by the actions and decisions that people make on a daily basis. Most consider religious figures, soldiers, doctors, firefighters, etc. to be honorable positions because they make a helpful contribution to society. Honorable people help others even if they cannot gain anything from the situation. An small example of honor would be taking an hour out of your busy schedule to help brighten someone's day. This clashes greatly with the perception of honor in the Old South. We consider slavery to be an illegal act and something bad but the Old South considered most slave masters to be very honorable people. If honor has changed so significantly over the past 150 years just imagine what it will be like in the next years to come.