THE CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF OLD AGE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH, 1830-1900 By MARCUS G. HARVEY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2001 Copyright 2001 by Marcus G. Harvey PREFACE But for his savage beating of Charles Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate, it is unlikely that the short-lived Preston Brooks would have cut much of a figure in the history books. His precipitous act came, however, at a crucial moment. In 1856, many Northerners were ready to see in Brooks' violence a confirmation of the abolitionist argument that slavery brutalized white Southerners. For Southerners, Sumner's "Crime against Kansas" speech which had provoked the assault gave such offense that Brooks became an embodiment of Southern resistance to the perceived indignities the region was enduring.' For Brooks himself, the imperative for action stemmed from the affront to an aged kinsman and to his home: "I felt it my duty to relieve Butler and avenge the insult to my State. Although clearly prompted by its dictates, the relationship between the code of honor and Brooks' actions is complex. Brooks and Sumner were social equals and, despite his opposition to slavery, Sumner had commanded respect below the Mason- Dixon in the years prior to 1856. At least one proslavery tract-a response to Uncle Tom's 'One need only visit the South Caroliniana collection in Columbia to be reminded of Brooks' importance to Southern identity. Although his violent temper got him expelled from the University days before his graduation, the library's wall sports a "Tribute" to his memory. Appropriately, perhaps, the tablet once adorned a now-demolished building, but a quick-thinking librarian salvaged it for the Archives. ^David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming ofthe Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 290. iii Cabin by the Reverend E.J. Stearns-distinguished Sumner from the "class of Abolition leaders" that the author "had frequent occasion to refer [to], in no very flattering terms." In Steams' words, "Charles Sumner. in spite of his position on this subject [abolition], is every inch a gentleman."^ Yet Brooks had not afforded Sumner the honor due to a gentlemen. Rather he had caned the man savagely about the head and shoulders before Sumner could even rise to his feet. In the aftermath of the attack. Southern apologists serambled to make clear that no other approach had been merited. In reviewing a biographical essay on Brooks, one contributor to Russell's Magazine objected to affording Sumner any honor at all, arguing that it was a mistake to characterize the affair as a duel. "We deeply regret that the reviewer should have fallen into such weak and miserable common-place, when he comes to speak of our gallant soldier 'as a duelist'." The distinction between soldier and duelist is telling, as the former is under no obligation to conform to any formalized code of conduct. Stridently, the author proclaimed his wish "that we could strike out these pages of wretched 'palliation' and condemnatory apology from this otherwise excellent paper."'' ^E.J. Stearns, Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin: Being a Logical Answer to Its Allegations and Inferences Against Slavery as an Institution. With a Supplementary Note on the Key, and an Appendix ofAuthorities. By the Rev. E. J. Stearns, A.M. Late Professor in St. John's College, Annapolis, MD (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1853), vi. ‘'Review of the Southern Quarterly Review volume 4, Russell's Magazine 1 (June 1857): 257. In his treatment of this incident, Kenneth S. Greenberg describes it as "a duel- but, at least in the Southern mind, a duel between a superior and an inferior." His characterization of the event is here peculiar. Duels-practically by definition-assumed social equality. Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen: The Political Culture ofAmerican Slavery, New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History, ed. Thomas Bender (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 144. IV In a similar vein, the editor of the Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal complained bitterly after his Northern colleagues discussed Sumner's case in the pages of the Boston Medical and SurgicalJournal. "We must express our regret that such an article should have appeared in so respectable a journal; and particularly that the editor should have called special attention to it."^ Sumner's invective had been biting, but he had not-as one might think from the treatment afforded it by contemporaries and historians alike-confined his vitriol to the state of South Carolina, or the person of Brooks' relative, Andrew Pickens Butler (1796- 1857). In his speech, Sumner excoriated Virginia and lashed out at both Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) from Illinois and Virginian James Murray Mason (1798-1871). Peculiar in Sumner's remarks, however, was the extent to which his calumniation of Butler simultaneously accused the man of being a liar while mocking the infirmities of his old age. In Sumner's words, Butler was a second Don Quixote who had made for himself a "mistress" of the "harlot. Slavery"; unable to master his passions, Butler "overflowed with rage. and, with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his speech."® ^Review of "Case ofWon. Charles Sumner. Read before the Boston Society for Medical Improvement. By Marshall S. Perry, M.D., Boston." Atlanta Medical and SurgicalJournal 2 (February 1857): 373. ®It would be hard to miss the suggestion that Butler was a liar from Sumner's remarks: "But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution, or in stating the law, whether in the details of statistics or the diversions of scholarship. He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder." Charles Sumner, Kansas Affairs: Speech. in the Senate ofthe United States, May 19, 1856 (New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1856), 3, 5, 29. The significance of "giving the V Honor demanded that individuals defend family members who had been publicly humiliated, and scholars have demonstrated how this code obligated males to defend and control their female kin.’ Clearly, Southern expectations of this sort could extend to the kinsmen.*honor of aged * Contemporaries gave roughly equal weight to Sumner's slurs on Butler, as they did to his reviling of South Carolina. The aforementioned contributor to Russell's Magazine praised Brooks' "chastisement of the calumniator of his venerable uncle and of the State which he loved with a noble ardour." Similarly, the author of an 1857 paean to Brooks, asserted that "the double motive of vindicating the honor of his State, and the character of his aged and beloved relative" steeled Brooks' arm.^ In a footnote to his excellent treatment of the whole incident, David Donald notes that Sumner distinctly recalled having Brooks call him an "old man" as the blows began to fall. Although he believes Sumner's account-"the senator's memory was remarkably lie" so baldly may well have been greater in the antebellum South than in the North. Kenneth S. Greenberg, "The Nose, The Lie, and the Duel," chap. 1 in Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). ’Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 50-5; see also Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970). On the importance of father figures to Southerners, see Michael P. Johnson, "Planters and Patriarchy: Charleston, 1800-1860," Journal ofSouthern History 46 (February 1980): 48- 50. *Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen, 26. ’Review of the Southern Quarterly Review volume 4, Russell's Magazine 1 (June 1857): 257; "Honorable Preston S. Brooks," Southern Quarterly Review 30 (February 1857): 354. VI precise'-Donald does not think it especially significant, and other scholars have let it pass unnoticed. It does, however, seem odd that in defending the honor of one old man. Brooks beat another man whom he addressed as old, presumably as an insult. At forty- five, Sumner was a mere eight years Brooks' senior. The whole affair hints at the complexity of Southern attitudes towards, and uses of, "old age." '“Donald, Charles Sumner, 294n.6. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE iii ABSTRACT ix CHAPTERS 1 HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONSIDERATIONS I 2 GREY IN A WORLD OF BLACK AND WHITE 30 3 A PROFESSION COMES OF AGE 63 4 OLD AGE AND SOUTHERN MEDICINE 124 5 NINETEENTH-CENTURY ELDER CARE IN WORD AND DEED 173 6 EPILOGUE 206 BIBLIOGRAPHY 214 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 258 viii Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy THE CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF OLD AGE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH, 1830-1900 By Marcus G. Harvey December 2001 Chairperson: Bertram Wyatt-Brown Major Department: History The attitudes of literate nineteenth-century Southern whites towards the aged reflected neither broad patterns of veneration nor of marginalization. Rather, individuals deployed "old age" in ways that advanced their own ideological and material interests. Based primarily on contemporary periodical literature and other published sources, this study explores certain of these deployments to demonstrate their instrumentality, as well as the sensitivity of Southerners' rhetoric to particularities of time and place. This dissertation is at once a work in historical gerontology and Southern history. Chapter 1 establishes a historiographical context for the work as a whole and fleshes out several reasons to expect that Southerners may have deployed ideas about old age in culturally particular ways.