Honor and Violence in The Old South by Bertram Wyatt-brown

Honor is an enigmatic term.  Even for those who profess to have honor, it may be difficult to define.  Honor can mean anything from the esteem that one receives from his or her community to the value that that person places on his or her own beliefs.  Some may describe honor as a code of principles, one’s pride, deference either given or received or even a force of arms.  Some are of the opinion that this willingness to use force to defend one’s honor is of the very essence of that honor.  Bertran Wyatt-Brown takes that tack in the writing of the book Honor and Violence in the Old South.  In this tome, he endeavors to explain the meaning of honor in the antebellum south and in doing so he attempts to persuade the reader that violence was an integral and inextricable component.   

            Wyatt-Brown begins with his appraisal of honor by looking to a literary source from 1832 and an assessment of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “My Kinsman, Major Molineaux.”  From that point, he tackles such honor related issues as is origins, place in southern culture, family life, sexuality, gambling, personal combat, slave society and community disorder before tying all these thoughts together with another story, this time one of non-fiction: an “anatomy of a wife killing.” 

            This book has two main and interconnected themes.  The first is that honor played a crucial role in the daily life and policy making of the members of society in the Old South.  The second was that violence was also a crucial part of the daily life and decisions made by members of society and leaders in the southern states of the antebellum period.  The author opines that these two themes were inextricably linked because in the period at hand, men of honor would not hesitate to use violence in a defense of his own honor or in an attempt to dispute the honor of another person whom he felt was dishonorable. 

            There seems to be a great deal of original thought and processes in the formation of this book.  The author seems to have done a great deal of research into certain sections of the southern region.  He has collected anecdotal evidence of the thoughts that select individuals, communities and groups had regarding the themes of honor and violence and their place in society.  The choice of which source material to use in what instance and the organization of the paragraphs, chapters and the book as a whole was very effective in assisting the author in proving his basic thesis, that honor and violence were integral to southern culture.