Masters of Fate: Efficacy and Emotion in the Civil War South
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MASTERS OF FATE: EFFICACY AND EMOTION IN THE CIVIL WAR SOUTH by KYLE NICHOLAS OSBORN (Under the direction of John C. Inscoe) ABSTRACT This dissertation uses social-cognitive theory to analyze the emotions of white Southerners as they experienced secession and the Civil War. It argues that white Southerners showcased two major personality types of high-efficacy and low-efficacy during this timeframe. It furthermore suggests that that each personality type heavily influenced how individual Southerners envisioned secession, their Northern enemy, and the necessary level of brutality in waging the war for Southern independence. INDEX WORDS: Civil War, secession, Old South, emotions history, social-cognitive theory. MASTERS OF FATE: EFFICACY AND EMOTION IN THE CIVIL WAR SOUTH by KYLE N. OSBORN B.A., EAST TENESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY, 2004 M.A., EAST TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERITY, 2007 M.A.T., EAST TENNSEE STATE UNIVERSITY, 2007 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2013 © 2013 Kyle N. Osborn All Rights Reserved MASTERS OF FATE: EFFICACY AND EMOTION IN THE CIVIL WAR SOUTH by KYLE NICHOLAS OSBORN Major Professor: John C. Inscoe Committee: Stephen Berry James C. Cobb Laura Mason Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2013 iv ACKNOWLDGEMENTS Many people have helped make this dissertation possible. Professor Laura Mason has provided tremendous theoretical insight in the realm of cultural studies, a tricky terrain for even the most sure-footed student. Professor James Cobb especially helped me circumvent some of the pitfalls of repetition that come inherent in a study of North-South relations, a topic that historians have wrote upon voluminously for generations. Professor Stephen Berry has likewise guided me through some of the bustling terrain of emotions history and the concept of emotionality itself. I have no doubt greatly benefitted from working with such fine and courteous scholars. Professor John Inscoe has provided a mentorship that went miles beyond what any graduate student could even whimsically expect of a major advisor. His approach to the discipline of history, the craft of teaching, and the culture of academia are absolute models of inspiration to all who know him. He patiently oversaw this dissertation as it “evolved” from a study of Appalachian racial attitudes, to Appalachian visions of Northern society, to Southern visions of Northern society, to, finally, a study of Southern emotions during the Civil War era. It is my great fortune to include myself among the proud column v of Inscoe students who have contributed so tremendously (and will contribute more) to the fields of Appalachian and Southern history. If I ever become half the scholar Dr. Inscoe is, I will consider myself a wild success. If errors in fact or interpretation appear in my dissertation, they are of course mine, and mine alone. I would also like to thank Professor Andrew Slap at East Tennessee State University. However cruel it may have seemed at times, Andy originally encouraged me toward a career as an academic historian after I survived his fascinating graduate seminar in the Civil War era. I would like to thank my students at the University of Georgia for always providing me with fresh insights on history and (unknowingly to them most likely) for constantly re-generating my love for history and teaching even as I wandered into the dark and lonely corridors of completing a dissertation. I would like to thank my parents for always showing faith in my extended educational endeavors, even when they clearly deserved nothing of the sort. Finally, a great deal of gratitude goes to Cindy and my daughter Maya. Cindy did not help me conduct research, she did not type out my manuscript, nor, to my knowledge at least, has she ever read a single word of the document that appears below. Nevertheless, I can safely say that I probably would never have completed this dissertation without her. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMETNS . vi INTRODUCTION: The Masters of Fate . 1 CHAPTER 1 THEIR NORTHS: ANTEBELLUM SOUTHERN TRAVELLERS AND SECTIONAL IDENTITY . 22 2 THE SPLIT PERSONALITY OF THE SECEDING SOUTH . 60 3 AN EMOTIONAL REBELLION: THE COMING OF THE CIVIL WAR AS A DOUBLE REVOLUTION FOR CONFEDERATE WOMEN . 93 4 WAR BY HATE: HIGH-EFFICACY CONFEDERATES AND THE CONTAGIOPN OF ANGER . 134 5 WAR BY FATE: LOW-EFFICACY CONFEDERATES AND PROVIDENITAL FATALISM . 171 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 204 1 INTRODUCTION: THE MASTERS OF FATE Southern blood was running hot by March 1861. From Montgomery, Alabama, a group of elites passed the time in a hotel parlor by pondering their impending conflict with the North. The conversation inevitably turned to attacks against the Yankee character, which was supposedly epitomized by President Abraham Lincoln despite his Kentucky birth and Illinois residence. The recently-inaugurated Republican was, according to one woman, emblematic of the “kind who are always at corner stores sitting on boxes, whittling sticks, and telling stories as funny as they are vulgar.” Another man opined that any future civil war would end promptly once Yankee pockets felt the slightest financial pinch. At this point, a woman of Northern nativity among the group objected to the string of banalities cast against her regional homeland. “Yankees are no more mean and stingy than you are,” she protested, and “people at the North are as good as people at the South.” The congregants apologized and sat silently as the Northern defender continued her plea. But under that silence stewed fiery wrath, at least in the heart of Mary Chestnut. “If I were at the North I should expect them to belabour us and should hold my 2 tongue,” she recalled bitterly. For “we are divorced, North and South, because we hated each other so.”1 While Chestnut’s remark resonates with the power of cold finality, it was not the emotional experience of all Southerners as they severed their ties with the national Union. From Mississippi, Ann Lewis Hardeman felt far more trepidation than rancor. “This day the president elect [Lincoln] is to be inaugurated,” she somberly recorded in her diary on the fourth day of March, “no one knows what a day may bring forth – O that God may make our cause His own.” Hardeman had been wrestling with tortured anxiety for months. Weeks earlier she had learned from her nephew that sectional “war with all its horrors was inevitable!,” and Yankee invasion imminent. “I cannot describe my feelings,” she wrote in helpless refrain, “Lord have mercy upon me and sustain me in time of sore trial and danger – ‘thou O God art my only refuge.’” Why did Chestnut and Hardeman react with such disparate emotions to secession and the prospect of war? How did these emotions impact their visions of their newly refashioned Northern antagonists? How would these sentiments shape the war to follow? These are the major questions this study seeks to address.2 1 Diary Entry of 14 March 1861, in Ben Ames Williams, ed., A Diary from Dixie by Mary Boykin Chestnut (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 19-20. 2 Diary Entries of 4 March 1861, and 9 February 1861, in Ann Lewis Hardeman Diary, in Michael O’Brien, ed., An Evening when Alone: Four Journals of Single Women in the South, 1827-1867 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 322, 319. 3 This dissertation will argue that these divergent reactions of anger and anxiety (probably the two most dominant Southern sentiments during the sectional conflict) corresponded with entrenched personalities developed during the antebellum era; and that these dual personalities proved highly influential in both how Southerners embraced secession, and then how they demanded the Civil War be fought. While most scholars, including historians, have used the term “personality” without giving it much explicit thought or analysis, seeing it as something ethereal and indefinable, psychologists have long analyzed the concept with rigor and precision. For example, psychologist Richard Ryckman defines personality as an individual’s “dynamic and organized set of characteristics . that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in various settings.” In other words, personality is the patterns and consistencies shown in one’s thoughts, actions, and emotions over time, the propensity for a person to react to a dramatic event like Lincoln’s election with passive fright as opposed to fiery indignation.3 But, of course, the real question becomes - what creates personality? What factors help explain why Southerners were inclined to react as they did in 1861? Here, social psychology 3 Richard M. Ryckman, Theories of Personality (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2008), 4; While no historian has dealt explicitly with personality theory per se, historian Peter N. Stearns advocated for something similar with his theorization for “behavioral history.” See Stearns, ed., American Behavioral History: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 1-16. 4 provides insight through its focus on social factors like cultural learning and life experience, treating personality as a learned (and historical) phenomenon rather than the manifestation of inborn traits or characteristics. According to the bellwether theories of Albert Bandura, the most prominent social psychologist dedicated to the topic, the key to personality formation lies in a person’s “efficacy expectations,” meaning the perceived degree to which people can successfully manipulate and control their circumstances to attain favorable outcomes. In brief, according to Banudra’s theories, individuals with high-efficacy expectations tend to attack challenging situations with confidence and aggression (and show less tolerance for obstructions to their “best laid schemes”), while their low-efficacy counterparts consistently shy away from scenarios they deem beyond their competency to master.