Honor This

Do you mean agog, or a-gag? There are "honor people" and there are "not honor people." Count me among the latter. As talented as BW Brown and Kenneth Greenberg are as historians of Southern honor, I've never bought the case they make, that honor was a determining factor in sectional affairs.

The reason Southerners have traditionally been touchy and quick-tempered has been race, at least until very recently. When you are always in the presence of those beneath you, you are constantly on guard to never become like them. This worked during slavery and during segregation; you always protect your liberty when in the presence of those who have little or none. It's a daily reminder to be vigilant. I also think Southern thin-skin has a religious dimension, being particularly populated by evangelical Protestantism, more emotional, more individualized, less institutional than the Catholic and Episcopalian Churches that dominated the US from Virginia northward.

A couple of further problems with the article:

1.) Sensitivity over one’s honour was more than a purely personal matter. It was southern honour that caused the War of 1812. The areas of America that were suffering most from the British impressment of American sailors, and who had most to gain from expansion to the West and a possible conquest of Canada, were opposed to the war. Really now. It couldn't have anything to do with the gobs of money at stake in New England commerce, could it? That Jefferson's Embargo locked up the coast, bankrupted countless merchants, and dried up smaller ports like Salem and Newburyport? Federalists said war would kill trade. They were right. Look at the money, not the duels.

2.) In a much discussed recent book, Walter Russell Mead identifies four strands of American foreign policy: Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian, Wilsonian and Jacksonian. Jacksonians follow the ideas of President Andrew Jackson, the archetype of ante-bellum, aggressive southern honour, who fought more than a dozen duels. They see the pursuit of national honour as the prime purpose of policy. Right now, Jacksonianism reigns triumphant in the halls of American power. In fact, most commentators are saying the exact opposite, especially the vaunted neo-conservatives so often pasted as the new imperialists. Pax Americana is not Jacksonianism, but Wilsonianism: internationalist moralism, nation-building, making the world safe for markets and democracy. Jacksonians snuff out opponents; Wilsonians reform them.

3.) As the ancient Greeks knew, the pursuit of honour often leads people to attack others, to drive them down, in order to inflate themselves. The Greeks called such behaviour hubris, and believed that hubris inevitably resulted in disaster. It certainly did for the Confederacy. Now we get to the crux of the matter: America as Achilles, hubristic nationalism spelling defeat. Nonsense. Achilles sat on the beach when he didn't get his way. America took to the battlefield to defeat and defang Troy. That isn't overweening pride; that's acting responsibly.