An Honorable Problem: a Case Study in the Pursuit of Honor in the Antebellum and Civil War South
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Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2020 An honorable problem: A case study in the pursuit of honor in the antebellum and Civil War South Kelsey Joann Sissel Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Recommended Citation Sissel, Kelsey Joann, "An honorable problem: A case study in the pursuit of honor in the antebellum and Civil War South" (2020). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 18230. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/18230 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An honorable problem: A case study in the pursuit of honor in the antebellum and Civil War South by Kelsey Joann Sissel A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Major: History Program of Study Committee: Kathleen Hilliard, Major Professor Lawrence T. McDonnell Susan E. Cross The student author, whose presentation of the scholarship herein was approved by the program of study committee, is solely responsible for the content in this thesis. The Graduate College will ensure this thesis is globally accessible and will not permit alterations after a degree is conferred. Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2020 Copyright © Kelsey Joann Sissel, 2020. All rights reserved. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABSTRACT v INTRODUCTION: PART I 1 PART II 8 CONCLUSION: PART III 35 BIBLIOGRAPHY 38 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS All the hard work – both obvious and hidden – within this work would never have been possible without the consistent support of my family, friends, and academic mentors. As anyone who knows me could tell you, I am not one to gush about my feelings. So, in my usual fashion of glossing over the true depth of the gratitude I feel for the amazing people who have gotten me to this point, I will do my best to keep my language brief and punctured with humor (at least I think I am funny). My major professor Dr. Kathleen Hilliard and committee member Dr. Lawrence T. McDonnell have been cheering me on from the start. Larry did, after all, give me the idea that became this thesis. Without their constant support, reassurances, questions, and unflagging curiosity this work would be both far less interesting and, most likely, unfinished. Thank you both for everything you bring to the Department of History. It would be much less interesting without the two of you. You are both truly a credit to our profession. Dr. Susan E. Cross from the Department of Psychology deserves a special shout-out as well for her incredible interdisciplinary work in the field of honor (and willingness to be on my committee). Scholars like you will help to drive research in this field to new heights and enable an understanding that transcends disciplinary boundaries. I am excited to see where your research takes you next and how it might inform my own work in the future! Another special mention belongs to Dr. John Monroe, Dr. David Hollander, and Mr. Richard Kehrberg. As an undergrad, these three brilliant historians reignited my passion for history and rescued me from a life of chemical engineering. As a student in their classes, their love for history was undeniable and absolutely infectious. Their enthusiasm for understanding the past and engaging and passionate style of teaching inspired me to pursue history at the iv graduate level. Mr. Kehrberg, in particular, had the most direct influence on my staying at Iowa State past my bachelor’s degree. I will be forever in his debt. To my friends in the Grad Office (and those elsewhere), thank you so much for all your help and support. Being a part of a community like the one we had as TAs was the experience of a lifetime and I will never forget it. From movie nights and FACs to two partially finished Pathfinder campaigns, you were/are a huge part of why I love Iowa State. Sydney, Wansu, Sarah, Matt, Cole, Dylan, Colton, and even Nate, thanks for sharing in this crazy experience with me and here is to many more memories to come! Finally, I want to recognize those people who have been there for me since the very beginning (ca. 1994). I have been extremely lucky to have grown up with two amazing parents who have always encouraged me to follow my passions and turn them into something great. And while this work is a far-cry from the greatness I still hope to achieve in my lifetime, I do hope it does not reflect too poorly on their parenting nor on the unconditional love and support they have given me through the years. I love you both. But my absolute rock and foundation has been my sister, Mackenzie Schwartz. For three years she was endlessly and tirelessly supportive and encouraging. Her unflinching optimism and absolute belief in my abilities as a historian, a writer, and a scholar kept me afloat when I could not manage any of that for myself. She has been at my side since day one and, though I did not always know it, has had my back ever since. She is the kind of person I hope everyone has in their life. Love you, Mac-a-Doo! Very gratefully and humbly, Kelsey Joann Sissel v ABSTRACT This work uses the life of one man, Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg, to assess the life cycle of honor using newspapers, personal correspondence, pamphlets, and eulogies. Through early blunders with the public performance of honor, Gregg showcases honor’s relative flexibility as he grew into his role as an honorable southern gentleman as the South edged closer and closer to Civil War. As he came into his own, Gregg asserted his claim to honor through local political office, military service, and finally as a radical secessionist who helped lead South Carolina into armed rebellion against the union between the states. With his death at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Gregg cemented his legacy as an honorable man. 1 INTRODUCTION: PART I On December 15, 1862, Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg of the Army of Northern Virginia was shot off his horse. Douglas Southall Freeman wrote in his 1943 Lee’s Lieutenants that Gregg had been attempting to reign in his men as the Federals attacked a gap in the line at Fredericksburg. A curious moment in the history of the war, “in his deafness [Gregg] became confused and mistook the attacking Federals for retiring Confederates who might be shot down by his men.”1 As the Union advanced Orr’s Rifles (the regiment to Gregg’s right) turned and fled creating a gap between the rushing Federals and the retreating Confederates. It was into this gap that Gregg rode to order a cease fire where “Gregg, directly between his retreating soldiers and the pursuing Federals, was shot from his horse.”2 Having stopped the incursion into the gap the First South Carolina was reinforced by General Jubal Early’s brigades that had, up to this point, been held in reserve. As they pushed the Union back toward the Rappahannock, “Some of the advancing officers remembered […] they had seen a man pull himself painfully up by the side of a little tree, and wave them onward. It was Maxcy Gregg.”3 Accolades for the fallen general echoed across the Confederacy as comrades, friends, and family eulogized one of the South’s earliest and most radical secessionist stalwarts. During his lifetime, Gregg epitomized antebellum southern values and lived a life of honor. His eulogist, Benjamin Palmer, summed up Gregg’s life in this way: Inheriting a more than Roman virtue from his honored sire, it grew in him to such a robustness and symmetry as to command the homage of universal reverence. To say that he was incapable of falsehood, in any of the forms in which it is acted among men, would present but the coarse profile of his immaculate truthfulness. The historian must say of him more than this; that he could not stoop even to those minor indirections which creep unwittingly into human intercourse, and which are almost sanctioned by the usage of society. His simple word was the gauge of honor, and was always accepted as his surest pledge. His 1 Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943), 355-356. 2 Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 356. 3 Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 357. 2 innate sense of right, which could not inflict a wilful [sic] wrong, looked with a cultivated resentment upon the wrong perpetrated by another; and as the aribiter [sic] of many a dispute, the honor of a friend was confided to a guardian whose jealousy would not suffer it to be tarnished with a stain.4 Palmer’s tribute suggested a life of honesty, integrity, sincerity, and courage. Gregg’s death on the battlefield was a tragic, but fitting end to a life well lived. It was an honorable death for what the elite, white south deemed an honorable man. This thesis considers the life of Maxcy Gregg and the southern social system that declared him honorable in attempting to answer the question: What did the life of an honorable man in the antebellum south look like? Prior to its disappearance sometime during the Civil War, a socially recognized code of honor carried immense weight in the American South.5 It served as the South’s unofficial social, cultural, and political policing system designed to maintain and enforce certain standards on and among certain classes of men.