Hosted by the Gettysburg College and civil war institute. David currently serves as a lecturer in American History at the university of edinburgh in scotland. He teaches a wide range of courses in the u. S. South. After beginning his career as a high school teacher, in florida, he earned his phd at the university of North Carolina, chapel hill. He taught at North CarolinaState University and there he published his first book, a superb one. Moments of despair, suicide, divorce and debt in civil war era North Carolina. It explores the shifting sentiments of black and white towards suicide, debt and divorce in the post civil war south. This book received a number of awards. Hes got a new book entitled, driven from home, North Carolina civil war refugees. It should be out in october. Published by the university of North Carolina press. So pleased he is here. His son was a scholarship recipient two years ago. We know their family very well. We are thrilled you are going to come back. Hes going to speak about southern honor and southern defeat. Southern honor is tossed around a fair amount. Usually, it conjures up the idea of cheating each other. Ueling, shooting each other. It is a much more complex ethic. Im pleased that david is here to explore that topic with us. [applause] mr. Silkenat i want to begin by thanking pete for invitingly me and putting together a tremendous program. Im looking for to this week forwardward looking to this week probably as much as you are. I want to thank the the entire staff, especially allison, for helping with the logistics. Shortly after lees surrender at appomattox, a Union Colonel received an unusual mission from general john pope. He traveled down the mississippi from popes headquarters from st. Louis to louisiana and from there, travel up the red river to shreveport where he was to demand general kirby smiths surrender using the appomattox terms as a template. The trip took nearly a month, far longer than he anticipated. Insisting upon delivering popes message in person, sprague was repeatedly delayed before he received permission to enter confederate lines. Crossing into rebel territory on may 8, he traveled up river via steamboat sharing the vessel with simon buckner, who had surrendered in 1862 and now served as kirby smiths chief of staff. Also on board were several paroled soldiers from lees army now headed home. Sprague hoped that popes letter would make the smiths path clear. Lee had surrendered in april 9. Johnson had surrendered on april 26. And the general had accepted the surrenders of generals cobb, taylor and maury in the ensuing weeks. Sprague had known kirby smith and buckner from the old army and expected them to bend to the logic of events. Kirby smith read popes message. He refused to respond immediately, explaining he was scheduled to meet with western confederate governors in marshall, texas, 20 miles west of shreveport. Asked sprague to wait while he consulted with authorities. Before he left kirby smith, sprague saw a benevolent desire to avoid the infliction of needless suffering. When he returned a week later, kirby smith told sprague he could not surrender. In a lengthy memorandum, kirby smith articulated his reasoning. He argued that my army was menaced only from a distance and it is large and well supplied and extensive country full of resources. Unlike lees worn and exhausted army at appomattox, his force faced no immediate threat. Considering the different circumstances, the appomattox terms were not such that a soldier could honorably except. Accept. He argued an officer can honorably surrender his command when he is resisted to the utmost of his power. Given the condition of his army, he reasoned that it cannot be said the duty imposed upon me has been fulfilled to the utmost extent required by the laws of honorable warfare. Unlike some of his subordinates who harbored fantasies about the transmississippi confederacy continuing to fight, kirby smith did not hold Unrealistic Expectations about the military prospect before him. However, says he was in a stronger military position than lee, kirby smith believe he deserves better terms. He believed the federal governments insistence on the appomattox terms as they intended to humiliate people who have defended gallantly. Kirby smith proposed immunity from prosecution, a full restoration of Political Rights and the freedom to leave the country unhindered. Any less liberal terms would be contrary to the laws which custom has made binding among military men and would engender rebellion. The word that appears over and over again in kirby smiths memorandum to sprague is honor. His defeat was inevitable but he wanted to ensure that when defeat came, it came without the necessity of him sacrificing his honor. What id like to do today is honor shaped the contours of the confederacys final months, how it influenced the transition from wartime to peacetime and how it affects the major questions of reconstruction afterwards. For a man of civil war era, the idea of honor possessed levels of meaning that have now largely disappeared. For them, honor was something to be prized, cultivated and fiercely guarded. To read the diaries and correspondence of men in the 1840s, youll see a preoccupation with honor the borders on obsession. For all the importance they attached to honor, however, it can be difficult to appropriate Supreme CourtJustice Stewart definition of obscenity, they knew honor when they saw it. Definean be difficult to to appropriate Supreme CourtJustice Stewart s definition of obscenity, they knew honor when they saw it. A a few broad generalizations can be made, however. First, honor was primarily about how one was judged by the outside community. The community established a set of social paradigms a man of honor must uphold. One could not be a man of honor alone on a desert island. Second, honor was interwoven with masculinity. While women could be venerated for their verdure, only men could have honor. Third, the meaning of honor, the precise rules and values that men needed to uphold, very based on geography and social class. For young men attending harvard, for instance, from the 1850s, honor was obtained through selfdiscipline and restraint. A man of honor was one who was in control of his emotions and the world around him. Conversely, poor immigrants in new york might demonstrate their honor through their prowess in a tavern brawl or at the gambling tables. Some of the most interesting and controversial scholarship on honor in the civil war has looked at the way it which honor functioned in the south. Within the context of a slave society, honor took on a particular valence. When the master slave dynamic functioned as the dominant cultural metaphor, honor became intertwined with mastery. Men of honor were masters over their slaves in over their and over their households and masters within their community. To challenge of mans honor was to make them into a slave. Because the metaphorical stakes were so high, southern white men responded viscerally to any challenge to their honor. Even minor slights required in immediate and bold response. Some historians have linked this profound obsession with honor with the distinct features of Southern Society y. Honor hopes to explain why dueling, which had died out in the rest of the world by 1800, continued in the south decades later. While the duel remain the purview of the planter class, poor white southerners were no less invested in the culture of honor. Like their counterparts, poor whites responded with violence, often in the form of what one historian referred to as roughandtumble brawls. The flip side of honor was shame. Failing to uphold ones honor had social ramifications. Dishonorable men were ostracized from Polite Society and effectively socially dead. The greatest fear of planters as was they would be unmasked. The facade of honor they had worked to project would crumble and they would become socially marginalized. The slide we see is from florida where one florida politician feels like he has been insulted by another politician who he claims has not given him the due which he needs as an honorable man. When the war came, honor help drive men into military service in both the north and the south. There was no greater venue than combat to showcase and enhance ones honor. Reading soldiers diaries and correspondence before the first battles, their greatest hope was that they would fight honorably and from many their greatest fear was not that they would die on the battlefield that they would behave dishonorably. For northerners and southerners alike, honor extended beyond the individual in concentric circles. They valued independent honor not only on a personal basis, but they also sought to protect the honor of their families, their community, their state, region, and country. When the war came, soldiers manifested similar affinity when it came to protecting the personal honor as a soldier and the honor of their regiment, their army, and their nation. Their preoccupation with honor house to explain why soldiers invested so much Emotional Energy in material manifestations of their honor, such as regimental flags and were willing to die to protect them. By january, 1865, most outside observers concluded the confederate defeat was inevitable. To be sure, many confederate soldiers whom jason philip has dubbed diehard rebels maintained confederate victory was just around the corner even went all the evidence seems to suggest when all theeven evidence seems to suggest otherwise. A sentiment that Jefferson Davis appear to have shared. For those who saw the writing on the wall, however, they began to calculate how they could and the war without bringing dishonor on themselves and their countrymen. Was it possible to be defeated without sacrificing their honor . Abraham lincoln was cognizant that defeating the confederacy and bringing the war to conclusion required appealing to confederate sense of honor. If they could be persuaded that ending the war was more honorable, thousands of lives could be saved. When lincoln met with grant and sherman at city point in march, he instructed them to offer generous terms that would not compromise confederate honor. Let them surrender and go home, lincoln told him, they will not take up arms again. Let them all go, officers and all. Let them have their horses with them to plow with. And their guns to shoot crows with. Give them the most liberal and honorable of terms. Many confederates also believe d that a quick end to the war would be the best way to protect their honor. Foremost among them was colonel breckenridge. Convinced in 1865, defeat was inevitable, breckenridge argued that the confederacy should not be captured and fragmented, but we should surrender as a government that we may thus maintain the dignity of her cause and secure the respect of our enemies in the best terms for our soldiers. He recognized that surrender carried some risk, particular for those who might face prosecution for treason. Nonetheless, breckenridge maintained this has been a magnificent epic. Let it not terminate in farce. Jefferson davis refuse to d to consider any outcome short of a complete confederate independence. Daviss intransigence grew out of a stubborn faith in confederate destiny and his belief that his moral and political obligations to his office precluded surrender when it results in his countrys demise. As davis told one associate, the confederate constitution does not allow him to treat for his own suicide. When it finally came time for confederates to lay down their arms, questions of honor were at the forefront. Confederates hoped his surrender in such a way as to minimize any lasting shame while Union Officials cognizant of how dearly rebels protected their honor, saw to minimize the dishonor that surrender would entail. While we look at grants conduct at appomattox, it is clearly understood helper from the confederates held her honor. It is clear he understood how strongly the confederates held their honor. And went to Great Lengths not to offend lee. He one of them to see that defeat did not necessarily mean they were without honor and the reunification could take place without a lasting shame looming over their heads. Grant understanding of the role of honor and the army of northern virginia, host to explain why he did not demand lees sword or why he ordered his men to halt any celebrations that might embarrass the confederates. In his memoirs, grant noted when news of the surrender first reached our lines, our men inspired a salute of 100 guns in the honor of the victory. I sent word to have it stopped. The confederates were our prisoners and we did not want to exult over their downfall. This illustration is probably the First Published illustration of the meeting of lee and grant at appomattox. It is published by courier and ives. It appears to be for sale in new york less than a month after the surrender. For those of you who have been to appomattox or who have seen the actual artifacts in the smithsonian or read the surrender recognize that almost everything about this image is wrong. They didnt sit at the same table. That is not what the chair looks s looked like, that is not what the wallpaper looks like. That was not grants uniform. What i like about this image is i think it tells us something about the way the war ended, or one version of the way the war ended. Here are two men sitting at a table having a conversation as. As equals. At the point at which they are the most unequal. Lees army is broken. Grants army is not. If they walk out of the table without an agreement, bad things are going to happen to lees army. For this moment, they are meeting as equals. This is a more accurate depiction of what happened, a painting which is now housed at the Virginia Historical society, painted around 1920. I often show this paid into my painting to my students and ask them, especially, these are british who may not know the civil war iconography, who is the victor in this painting . [laughter] if you did not know that grant is the victor you wouldve thought that lee would walk out of here cheering. I think it says something about what southerners thought about the end of the war. Several decades later. The magnanimous tone expressed by grant and other generals may have had unintended consequences. Some confederates went home believing that since the honor was intact, they could continue to for claim confederate dollars proclaim confederate values even after the confederacy ceased to exist. That surrender did not necessarily mean defeat. As confederate general richard taylor, son of Zachary Taylor and Jefferson Daviss brotherinlaw, told the subordinate, you will explained explain to your troops that a surrender will not be the consequence of any defeat but is simply yielding upon the best terms and with the preservation of our military honor to the logic of events. Even more disturbingly, an alabamian noted that appomattox was not the surrender of principles that no honorable man could bear, but a surrender which honor was earned and the moral grantor of the south rescue height unknown before. Turning home after the surrender, he establish the whites of white carnations that predated the klan. Although appomattox march the beginning of the end for the confederate nation, many rebels left with their commitment to values of White Supremacy intact and reinforced. At appomattox and at the surrenders that followed at Bennett Place and other sites, union and confederate generals used a shared vocabulary distinguished between honorable and dishonorable surrender with that had been established at the beginning of the war. Major Robert Anderson was praised as a here at fort sumter as a hero at fort sumter for his bravery prior to surrender, only capitulating after suffering from heavy bombardment and with no prospect for victory. Other officers, such as david tweet, isaac went were vilified when they surrender prematurely. This paradigm of the honorable surrender holster explain why kirby smith could not bring himself to surrender under the same terms accepted by robert e. Lee. Lee found himself in a position where continuing to fight would produce only further effusion of blood. That phrase shows up over and over again in surrender negotiations. Kirby smith had not reach that ed that threshold where he could order his men to stack arms. In his comparative study of defeat, wolfgang sleeve andbush, wolfgang argues that one of the most unusual features of the civil war was how quickly southerners developed a rationale to explain defeat. He notes that most nations usually take a generation before consents of narrative develops about why and how they lost. But confederates seem to arrive at a common explanation almost as soon as the war is over. As Michael Obrien has observed, few cultures are better prepared ideologically for the disaster of war. Many explanations have been deposited for this. My personal favorite is that the southern obsession with scotland host explain why narratives honorable defeat came so quickly. Like scotland, southerners saw themselves as a distinctive region within a larger political union. Reading the poetry of robert burns, southerners had a ready vocabulary to describe how one could fight, lose and yet remain heroic and honorable. That fits the entire narrative of scottish history. Mark twain was overstating the case when he claims the civil war would not have happened if southerners had not read Walter Scotts novels. The southern obsession with scotland, which is everywhere when you look for it, may help them understand how defeat and honor were not irreconcilable. One of the earliest articulations of a next donation of an explanation for confederate defeat came in the form of lees farewell address at appomattox. On the evening of april 9, the same day he surrendered to grant, lee assigned his aide with the task, how to sympathetically explain the surrender and thank the troops for their sacrifice . When by 10 00 a. M. The next morning, he had not yet completed the address, lee sequestered in his personal ambulance u