Your Heritage Will Still Remain:Southern Identity Formation in Mississippi from the Sectional Conflict Through the Lost Cause
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Mississippi State University Scholars Junction Theses and Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 8-1-2010 Your heritage will still remain:southern identity formation in Mississippi from the sectional conflict through the lost cause Michael J. Goleman Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td Recommended Citation Goleman, Michael J., "Your heritage will still remain:southern identity formation in Mississippi from the sectional conflict through the lost cause" (2010). Theses and Dissertations. 5042. https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td/5042 This Dissertation - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Scholars Junction. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholars Junction. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “YOUR HERITAGE WILL STILL REMAIN”: SOUTHERN IDENTITY FORMATION IN MISSISSIPPI FROM THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT THROUGH THE LOST CAUSE By Michael Jory Goleman A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Mississippi State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in United States History in the Department of History Mississippi State, Mississippi August 2010 “YOUR HERITAGE WILL STILL REMAIN”: SOUTHERN IDENTITY FORMATION IN MISSISSIPPI FROM THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT THROUGH THE LOST CAUSE By Michael Jory Goleman Approved: _______________________________ _______________________________ Jason K. Phillips Peter C. Messer Associate Professor of History Associate Professor of History (Dissertation Director and Major (Graduate Coordinator and Committee Professor) Member) _______________________________ _______________________________ Michael V. Williams Anne Marshall Assistant Professor of History Assistant Professor of History (Committee Member) (Committee Member) _______________________________ Gary L. Myers Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Name: Michael Jory Goleman Date of Degree: August 7, 2010 Institution: Mississippi State University Major Field: United States History Major Professor: Dr. Jason K. Phillips Title of Study: “YOUR HERITAGE WILL STILL REMAIN”: SOUTHERN IDENTITY FORMATION IN MISSISSIPPI FROM THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT THROUGH THE LOST CAUSE Pages in Study: 258 Candidate for Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The following study traces the transformation of an American identity from the sectional conflict through the end of the nineteenth century in an effort to understand how that identity eventually changed into something regarded and defined as distinctly southern. Mississippi offers fertile ground for such a study since the state so closely mirrored the American experience prior to the Civil War with episodes such as Indian removal, frontier living, the incorporation of racial slavery, and the creation of a social order based on independent landownership. Mississippi also aptly represented the traditional southern experience beginning with the Civil War due to the state’s participation in the formation of the Confederacy, staunch opposition to Reconstruction, the overthrow of Republican rule within the state in 1875, the codification of segregation and a white-supremacist social order, and the social, political, and economic oppression of the state’s African American population. Understanding the nuances of social identity formation requires a ground-level analysis to uncover how individuals created and reshaped their social identity in the wake of significant challenges to the established social structure. Diaries, personal correspondences, newspaper editorials, and reminiscences provide a wealth of information in revealing how Mississippians thought of themselves and others, how various groups (Unionists, Confederates, conservatives, and African Americans) fashioned competing social identities, and how those groups vied for legitimacy and control of the state through their interaction with one another. The transformation of a group or collective identity during a series of crises from the sectional conflict through the end of the nineteenth century not only reveals how Mississippians made sense of their surroundings and place within it but informed the parameters and outcomes by which the contest for social control of the state would be fought and won. The struggle for social control culminated in the establishment of a strict, white- supremacist social order which lauded the exploits of the white inhabitants, vilified the actions of blacks, and ultimately defined the basic tenets of a southern identity for the next one hundred years. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all the faculty members in the History Department at Mississippi State University for helping me grow and progress as a historian. Dr. Peter Messer has served on all my graduate committees and has continually provided much needed and valuable guidance on how to think about history. Dr. Richard Damms served on many of my committees and sparked an interest in me that I never thought I would have in foreign relations history. I would also like to thank Dr. Anne Marshall and Dr. Michael Williams for serving on my dissertation committee and providing their much appreciated insights, especially during my defense. I had classes from several of the history faculty and I would like to thank those individuals for their time and effort: Dr. Mary Kathryn Barbier, Dr. Jim Giesen, Dr. Matthew Hale, Dr. Rebecca Montgomery, and Dr. Godfrey Uzoigwe. I owe much debt and gratitude to Dr. Jason Phillips who served as my advisor and chair on all my graduate committees; he oversaw much of my graduate work and took the time to listen and help me work through problems. I always left his office encouraged and he always provided me with the latitude to test ideas and explore different avenues (even when they were wrong—and they often were). Finally I could not have completed this dissertation without the support of my wife, Lynda. She allowed me the time needed to conduct research and kept the kids entertained while I locked myself away in order to write. She is my everything. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. ii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 II. “THE SOUTHERN PHALANX”..........................................................................20 III. “THOSE WHO SHOULD BE BROTHERS” .......................................................51 IV. “LIKE PATRIOTS OF OLD” ...............................................................................83 V. “DYING DIXIE” .................................................................................................116 VI. “THY BRIGHT SUN WILL RISE AGAIN” ......................................................142 VII. “LONG AS LIFE SHALL LAST” ......................................................................170 VIII. CONCLUSION: “THOU ART NOT DEAD”.....................................................205 NOTES.............................................................................................................................213 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................232 iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION We shall overcome, We shall overcome, We shall overcome some day. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe We shall overcome some day.1 Born in South Carolina in 1831 and relocating to Mississippi shortly afterwards, Thaddeus McRae’s family sent him to school in Hanover, Indiana when he reached young adulthood. McRae marveled at the new sights and customs he found when he first arrived in Hanover sometime after 1850 and noted two peculiarities “distinguishing the people of the ‘free states.’” “They made change to the cent,” McRae observed with naive incredulity, “For the first time in my life, I saw Copper-cents.” In the South, McRae explained, a picayune, or five-cent piece, was the lowest form of currency, but the copper cent allowed northerners to ask for payment for performing menial tasks. “I thus got the idea of stinginess,” McRae remarked, “as characteristic of the North which idea was intensified by the evident lack of that open hospitality to which I had always been accustomed in the South.” In addition to the circulation of copper cents the other peculiarity that McRae noticed among northerners was “the honor with which they regarded domestic labor.” “In the South work in the kitchen was regarded as servile,” commented McRae, “and young ladies of ‘Quality’ felt disgraced if compelled to engage in it.” Yet in the North the “young ladies of the best families […] appeared to boast” of 1 their familiarity with the kitchen and ability to prepare and serve meals to family and guests. For a young southerner the North seemed an exotic place full of new customs and a seemingly different culture and social structure. Not surprisingly, McRae immediately detected features of the North that diverged from his southern homeland, and while somewhat superficial, his observations hold deeper meaning than just the flow of currency and labor division in northern homes. While not explicitly stated, McRae implies that northerners had an obsession with money as evidenced by the fact that they would take the time to make change and charge for “little personal favors, for which the bare thought of a charge would have been insulting to a Southerner.”