Concept of honor and how that perception shaped their decisions during and after the war. This hourlong event was part of the annual summer symposium hosted by the Gettysburg College 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 if civil war and reconstruction, civil war memory, and the u. S. South. After beginning his career as a high schoolteacher, he in florida, he earned his ph. D at the university of North Carolina, chapel hill. He taught at the university excuse me, at North Carolina state university, and there he published his first book. It is a superb one. Moments of despair, suicide, divorce and debt and civil war era North Carolina. It explores the shifting sentiments, both black and white, towards suicide, debt and divorce in the postcivil war south. This book received a number of awards. Hes got a new book thats coming out. His new book is entitled driven from home, North Carolinas civil war refugees, and should be out in october, published by the university of North Carolina press. Im so pleased that he is here. In fact, his son was a scholarship recipient two years ago and so we know this family very, very well. Were thrilled that you are going to come back. He is going to be speaking about southern honor and southern defeat. Southern honor is tossed around a fair amount. Usually conjures up the idea of men dueling and shooting each other. It is certainly a much more complex ethic. Im pleased that david is here to explore that topic with us. David . [ applause ] i want to begin by thanking pete for putting together this for inviting me and putting together a tremendous program. I am looking forward to this week probably as much as you are. I also want to thank the entire staff here, especially allison, for helping with all of the logistics. Shortly after lees surrender at appomattox, Union Colonel john t. Sprig received an unusual mission from general john pope. He was to travel down the mississippi from popes headquarters in st. Louis to louisiana, and from there travel up the red river to shreveport where he was to demand confederate general Edmond Kirby Smith surrender. Using the appomattox terms as a template. The trip from st. Louis to the confederate trans mississippi capital took nearly a month, far longer than he anticipated. He repeatedly delayed en route before received permission to enter confederate lines. Crossing into rebel territory on may 8th, sprig traveled up river via steamboat, sharing the vessel with confederate general Simon Buckner who had surrendered in 1862 and now served as kirby smiths chief of staff. Also on board were several exchanged or paroled soldiers from lees army who were now headed home. Sprig hoped that popes letter and developments over the past month would make kirby smiths paths forward clear. Lee had surrendered on april 9th. Johnson had surrendered at Bennett Place in North Carolina on april 26. General canby accepted others in ensuing weeks. Sprig expected them to bend the logic of events. Kirby smith read popes message closely. Although he anticipated its contents he refused to respond immediately explaining that he was scheduled to meet with western confederate governors in marshall, texas, 20 miles west of shreveport. And asked sprig to wait while he consulted with civil authorities. Before he left, kirby smith admitted the force of recent events, and sprig saw him as a warm and benevolent. When he returned a week later however, kirby smith told sprig he could not surrender. In a lengthy memorandum for colonel sprig, kirby smith articulated his reasoning. He argued that my army was menaced only from a distance. His large and well supplied and extensive country full of resources. Unlike lees worn and exhausted army, his force faced no immediate military threat and had ample food and resources. Considering their different circumstances, the terms were not such that a soldier could honorably accept. He explained that 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 that 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 continued to fight indefinitely, kirby smith did not hold Unrealistic Expectations about the military prospects before him. However, since he was in a stronger military position than lee, kirby smith believed he deserved better terms. Furthermore, he interpreted the federal governments insistence on the appomattox terms as an indication that tended to you had my lie it a a people. Kirby smith proposed alternative terms including immunity from prosecution, a full restoration of Political Rights and the freedom to leave the country unhindered. Any less liberal terms kirby smith argued would be contrary to the laws which custom has made binding among nations and military men and would engender continued resistance and rebellion. The word that appears over and over again in kirby smiths memorandum to sprig is honor. His defeat was inevitable but he wanted to ensure that when defeat came it came without necessity of him sacrificing his honor. What id like to do today is look at how honor shaped the contours of the confederacys final months, how it influenced the transition from war time to peace time and how it affected the major questions of reconstruction afterwards. For a man of the civil war era the idea of honor possessed a gravitas and level of meaning that have now largely disappeared. For them honor was something to be prized, cultivated and fiercely guarded. If you read the diaries and correspondence of men in the 1840s, 50s and 60s, you will often see a preoccupation with honor that borders on obsession. For all the importance they attached to honor, however, precisely defining it can be difficult. To appropriate Supreme Court justice stewarts definition of obscenity, they knew honor when they saw it. 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 that the man of honor must uphold. Honor was fundamentally social in nature. 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 virtue, only men could have honor. Third, the meaning of honor, the precise rules and values that men needed to uphold, varied based on both geography and social class. For young men attending harvard, for instance here we see some Young Harvard undergraduates 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 yorks five points might demonstrate that honor through their prowess in a tavern brawl or at the gambling table. Some of the most interesting and controversial scholarship on honor in the civil war era has looked at the way honor functioned in the south. Within the context of a slave society, honor took on a particularly veilance. When the masterslave dynamic functioned as the dominant cultural metaphor, honor became fundamentally intertwined with mastery. Men of honor were masters. Masters over their slaves. Masters over their households. And masters within their community. To challenge a white mans honor was to symbolically make him 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 and immediate and bold response. Some historians have linked this profound obsession with honor with some of the distinct features of southern society. Honor, for instance, helps to explain why dueling, which it essentially died out in the rest of the Atlantic World by 1800, continued in the south decades later. While the duel remained the purview of the planter class, poor white southerners who were no less invested in the culture of honor. Like their planter counterparts, poor whites responded to challenges to their honor in violence often in the form of what one historian referred to as rough and tumble brawls. The flip side of honor was shame. Failing to uphold ones honor had significant social ramifications. Dishonorable men were off the ostracized from Polite Society and effectively so showily dead. The greatest fear of southern planters was they would be unmasked. The facade of honor that they worked so hard to project would crumble and they would become socially marginalized. This slide is from florida where one florida politicians feels like hes been insulted by another politician who he claims has not given him the due which is he needs as an honorable man. When the war came, honor helped 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 correspondents before their first battle, their greatest hope was that they would fight honorably and for many of them their greatest fear was not that they would die on the battlefield but they would behave dishonorably. For northerners and southerners alike, honor extended beyond the individual in concentric circles. They valued and defended honor not only on a personal basis, but they also sought to protect the honor of their families, their communities, their state, region and country. When the war came, soldiers manifested similar affinities when it came to protecting their personal honor as a soldier and the honor of their regiment, their army and their nation. Their preoccupation with honor helps 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 that the confederate defeat was inevitable. To be sure, many confederate soldiers whom Jason Phillips has dubbed diehard rebels, maintain the confederate victory was just around the corner, even when all the evidence seems just otherwise. A sentiment that confederate president Jefferson Davis appeared to have shared. For those who saw the writing on the wall, however, they began to calculate how they could end the war without bringing dishonor on themselves and their countrymen. Was it possible, they asked them selves, to be defeated without sacrificing their honor . Abraham lincoln was cognizant that defeating the confederacy and bringing the war to conclusion appealed to senses of honor. If they could be persuaded that ending the war was more honorable than continuing to fight, thousands of lives could be saved. When lincoln met with grant and sherman aboard the river queen at city point in march of 1865, he instructed them to offer generous terms that would not compromise confederate honor. Let them surrender and go home, lincoln told them. 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 if you like, their guns to shoot crows with. Give them the most liberal and honorable of terms. Many confederates also believed that a quick end to the war would be the best way to protect their honor. For most among them was confederate secretary of war john c. Breckenridge, convinced in early 1865 the confederate defeat was inevitable, breckenridge argued that the confederacy should not be captured in fragments, but we should surrender as a government, and we may thus maintain the dignity of our cause and secure the respect of our enemies and the best terms for our soldiers. He recognized that surrender carried some risk, particularly for those who might face prosecution for treason. Nonetheless, breckenridge maintained that this has been a magnificent epic in gods name let it not terminate in a farce. Jefferson davis, however, steadfastly refused to consider any outcomes short of a complete confederate independence. Davis intransigence grew out of a belief his moral and political beliefs of office precluded surrender when it resulted 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 to surrender in such a way as to minimize any lasting shame, while Union Officials cognizant of how dearly rebels protected their honor sought to minimize the dishonor that surrender would entail. When we look at grants conduct, it is clear that he understood how profoundly confederates held their honor and went to Great Lengths not to offend lee or his men. He wanted them to see that defeat did not necessarily mean they were without honor, and that reunification could take place without a lasting shame looming over their heads. Grants understanding of the role of honor had in the army of Northern Virginia helps to explain why he did not demand lees sword, for instance, or why he ordered his men to halt any celebrations that might offend or embarrass the defeated confederates. In his memoirs, grant noted that when news of the surrender first reached our lines, our men commenced firing a salute of 100 guns in honor of the victory. I had once sent word, however, to have it stopped. The confederates were now our prisoners and we did not want to exalt over their downfall. This illustration is probably the First Published illustration of the meeting of lee and grant. Published by currier and ives and they published different versions of it. It appears to be for sale in new york less than a month after the surrender. For those of you who have seen the actual artifacts in the smithsonian or read the surrender recognize almost everything about this image is wrong. They didnt sit at the same table. Those arent what the chairs looked like. Thats not what the wallpaper looked like. Grants uniform is wrong. There are lots of details about this that are completely off. What i like about this image though, i think it sort of tells us something about the way the war ended, or at least one version of the way the war ended. Here are two men sitting at a table having a conversation as equals. Theyre having a conversation as equals at the point in which they are the most unequal. Lees army is broken, grants army is not. If they walk out of this table without an agreement, bad things are going to happen to lees army. But here at least for this moment they are meeting as equals. This i think is a more accurate depiction of what happened. This is a painting which is now housed at the Virginia Historical society, painted around 1920. I often show this painting to my students and ask them, especially these are british students that may not know the civil war iconography as well as people in the audience who is the victor in this painting . And if you didnt know that grant is the victor, you would have thought that lee is the person who is going to walk out of here cheering. I think it says something about what confederates thought or former confederates or southerners thought about the end to the war several decades later. The magnanimous tone expressed by grant and other Union Generals may have had unintended consequences. Some confederates went home believing that since their honor was intact, they could continue to proclaim confederate values even after the confederacy itself ceased to exist and that surrender did not necessarily mean defeat. As confederate general richard taylor, son of president Zachary Taylor and Jefferson Davis brotherinlaw, told a subordinate, you will explain to your troops that a surrender will not be the consequence of any defeat, but is simply, so far as we are concerned, yielding upon the best terms and with the preservation of our military honor to the logic of events. Even more disturbingly, alabamian colin a. Battle noted appomattox was not the surrender of principles that notionable man could bear, but a surrender which honor was earned and the moral grandeur of the south rose to heights unknown before. Returning home after the surrender, colin established the knights of white carnation, a terrorist organization that predated the klan. Although appomattoxing marked the beginning of the end for the confederate nation, being rebels left with their commitment to confederate values of White Supremacy and southern distinctiveness intact and reinforced. In the surrenders that followed at Bennett Place and other sites, union and confederate generals used a share vocabulary distinguished between honorable and dishonorable surrender that had been established at the beginning of the war. Major Robert Anderson was praised as a hero at ft. Sumpter for his bravery prior to surrender, only capitulating after suffering from heavy bombardment and with no prospect of victory or escape. Other officers such as david twiggs and dixon miles were vilified when they surrendered their men prematurely. This paradigm of the honorable surrender helps explain why kirby smith could not bring himself to surrender under the same terms that had been acceptable to robert e. Lee. Lee, like Robert Anderson, found themselves in a position where continuing to fight would only show further blood. That phrase shows up over and over again in surrender negotiations. Smith had not yet reached that threshold where he could reasonably order his men to stack arms. In his comparative study of defeat, wolfgang sleepenbush 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 a consensus narrative develops about why and how they lost. But confederates seem to arrive at a common ex