Honor and Slavery
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A01=Kenneth S. Greenberg
Abner Doubleday
Abolitionism
Affair
African Americans
Anonymity
Author_Kenneth S. Greenberg
Burial
Category=JBCC
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=NHTS
Catherine Clinton
Clothing
Coffin
Competition
Correspondent
Culture of honor (Southern United States)
Culture of the Southern United States
Editorial
Edmund Ruffin
Edward L. Ayers
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Explanation
Fox hunting
Fraud
Freedman
Generosity
Hanging
Hatred
Henry Bibb
His Family
Humiliation
Illustration
In Death
Institution
J. Marion Sims
James Henry Hammond
Laborer
Laughter
Lynching
Manumission
Mr.
Murder
Mutilation
Nat Turner
Neglect
Newspaper
Novelist
Obedience (human behavior)
Old South
P. T. Barnum
Paternalism
Payment
Practical joke
Pseudonym
Publication
Reputation
Shirt
Slave rebellion
Slavery
Slavery in the United States
Suffolk University
Superiority (short story)
The Gambler (novel)
The Other Hand
The Word of a Gentleman
Theft
Trickster
Varina Davis
W. E. B. Du Bois
Wealth
White people
White Southerners
William Wells Brown
Worlds of Honor
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691017198
- Weight: 28g
- Dimensions: 197 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 02 Nov 1997
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The "honorable men" who ruled the Old South had a language all their own, one comprised of many apparently outlandish features yet revealing much about the lives of masters and the nature of slavery. When we examine Jefferson Davis's explanation as to why he was wearing women's clothing when caught by Union soldiers, or when we consider the story of Virginian statesman John Randolph, who stood on his doorstep declaring to an unwanted dinner guest that he was "not at home," we see that conveying empirical truths was not the goal of their speech. Kenneth Greenberg so skillfully demonstrates, the language of honor embraced a complex system of phrases, gestures, and behaviors that centered on deep-rooted values: asserting authority and maintaining respect. How these values were encoded in such acts as nose-pulling, outright lying, dueling, and gift-giving is a matter that Greenberg takes up in a fascinating and original way. The author looks at a range of situations when the words and gestures of honor came into play, and he re-creates the contexts and associations that once made them comprehensible.
We understand, for example, the insult a navy lieutenant leveled at President Andrew Jackson when he pulls his nose, once we understand how a gentleman valued his face, especially his nose, as the symbol of his public image. Greenberg probes the lieutenant's motivations by explaining what it meant to perceive oneself as dishonored and how such a perception seemed comparable to being treated as a slave. When John Randolph lavished gifts on his friends and enemies as he calmly faced the prospect of death in a duel with Secretary of State Henry Clay, his generosity had a paternalistic meaning echoed by the master-slave relationship and reflected in the pro-slavery argument. These acts, together with the way a gentleman chose to lend money, drink with strangers, go hunting, and die, all formed a language of control, a vision of what it meant to live as a courageous free man. In reconstructing the language of honor in the Old South, Greenberg reconstructs the world.
Kenneth S. Greenberg is Professor of History at Suffolk University. He is the author of Masters and Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery and is the editor of The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents.
