University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 12-2013 Southern honor, Confederate warfare : southern antebellum cultural values in Confederate military operations, 1861-1865. Goldberg University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.edu/etd Recommended Citation Goldberg, Matthew D., "Southern honor, Confederate warfare : southern antebellum cultural values in Confederate military operations, 1861-1865. Electronic Theses and Dissertations.18297/etd/511 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository.
This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact thinkir@louisville. SOUTHERN HONOR, CONFEDERATE WARFARE: SOUTHERN ANTEBELLUM CULTURAL VALUES IN CONFEDERATE MILITARY OPERATIONS, 1861-1865 By Matthew D., University of Louisville, 2011 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts of History Department of History University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky December 2013 Copyright 2013 by Matthew D. Goldberg All rights reserved SOUTHERN HONOR, CONFEDERATE WARFARE: SOUTHERN ANTEBELLUM CULTURAL VALUES IN CONFEDERATE MILITARY OPERATIONS, 1861-1865 By Matthew D., University of Louisville, 2011 A Thesis Approved on November 15, 2013 by the following Thesis Committee: __________________________________ Dr.
Glenn Crothers __________________________________ Dr. Daniel Vivian __________________________________ Dr. Julie Peteet ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Steven and Tyler Goldberg, who have encouraged my love of history since I was a child; my fiancé, Alex Fox, for her loving support; and for two mentors, Bryan Rich, who encouraged me to become a historian, and for Glenn Crothers, who taught me how. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr.
Glenn Crothers, for his guidance, patience, and belief in me. I would like to thank Dr. Daniel Vivian and Dr. Julie Peteet for their assistance during the writing of this thesis.
I would also like to thank my fiancé, Alex Fox, for her incredible patience, understanding, and loving help during this process. Also, thanks to my parents, Steven and Tyler Goldberg, for their longstanding support of my academic endeavors. iv ABSTRACT SOUTHERN HONOR, CONFEDERATE WARFARE: SOUTHERN ANTEBELLUM CULTURAL VALUES IN CONFEDERATE MILITARY OPERATIONS, 1861-1865 Matthew D. Goldberg November 15, 2013 This thesis examines the role antebellum southern cultural paradigms played in Confederate military operations during the American Civil War.
The prewar honor culture of the white southern male elite was intensely focused on chivalric values of courage, masculinity, piety, pride, contempt for cowardice, and loyalty. When war broke out between the United States and Confederacy, the southern elite moved from their prewar position as economic, political, and social leaders to military commanders. The violent and militaristic culture that characterized the prewar southern elite guided their actions as the military leadership of the Confederacy. Using the written record of the Confederate elite, campaign overviews, secondary literature about the period, and statistical studies of the Confederate army, this thesis finds strong evidence of the impact of the antebellum culture on the Confederate officer corps.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.vii INTRODUCTION: SOUTHERNERS, SOLDIERS, AND SLAVERY.1 CHAPTER 1: MOONLIGHT, MAGNOLIAS, AND MILITARISM.11 CHAPTER 2: COURAGE, CONFIDENCE, AND CAVALIERISM….44 CHAPTER 3: DEFIANCE, DECLINE, AND DOWNFALL.98 EPILOGUE: RECONSTRUCTION, RADICALS, AND RECIDIVISM.178 vi LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TABLE/ILLUSTRATION PAGE 3.1: Battle of Franklin………………………….2: Generals killed/mortally wounded by year.3: Combat casualties by year.4: Soldiers captured in selected engagements……………….5: Table of select battles and force ratios……………………….140 vii INTRODUCTION: SOUTHERNERS, SOLDIERS, AND SLAVERY This thesis examines the role of antebellum southern culture and its place in Confederate military operations during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Using paradigms of white southern elite behavior first identified by authors such as Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Kenneth S. Greenberg, John Hope Franklin, and W. Cash, the thesis demonstrates the ways that violence, militarism, elitism, and masculinity affected the strategies, operations, and tactics of Confederate commanders.
It evaluates the concept of southern cultural uniqueness and the ways that combat reflected cultural paradigms specific to the region. By concentrating on the antebellum values of elite southerners during the Civil War, the thesis reveals how important peacetime cultural principles shaped the wartime setting. In short, this thesis determines how cultural patterns of the antebellum southern elite affected their approach to warfare. Examining this question fully requires determining how Confederate military practices differed from prevailing military dictums of the time.
To this end, the thesis examines the military context of Napoleonic Europe to demonstrate how Confederate operations both reflected contemporary military tactics and departed from them. This style of historical inquiry uses traditional military history techniques to assess battlefield operations, but concentrates on newer methods of cultural history. In addition, the thesis undertakes a statistical appraisal of Confederate battlefield performance. By examining the written record of the officers and through data-driven research, it answers the central question of how antebellum cultural patterns affected Confederate operations.
1 Assessing how southern cultural values shaped the Confederate military requires three distinct sets of historical documents: primary literature from the officer class, secondary literature from southern cultural historians, and statistical data from the battles and campaigns of the war. The writings of Confederate commanders reveal their motivations and beliefs during the war. The secondary literature of the period offers crucial insight into the primary record. Secondary literature like Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South, W.
Cash’s The Mind of the South, Kenneth S. Greenberg’s Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Mash, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Pro- Slavery Arguments, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South, and John Hope Franklin’s The Militant South, 1800-1861 lays the framework for understanding the unique regional character of the antebellum South that defined how southerners approached their daily lives.1 Elite white males, who belonged to the planter class of the southern slavocracy also dominated the officer class of the Confederacy during the war. Determining what they believed before the war is central to understanding how they conducted the southern war effort. Wyatt-Brown, Greenberg, and Franklin have argued convincingly that southern society was characterized by a deeply formulaic and militaristic honor code that governed the daily lives of whites.
This honor code was a major part of the slave society that guided white male behavior and informed its adherents how to reinforce their status within the social caste. Central to this highly public form of social display was the slave system itself. Race-based slavery in the southern states was a brutal, violent, and endemic factor in the lives of every southerner. Violence between master and slave, both physical 2 and psychological, served as a major form of social control over the large black subject population.
But despite the commonplace nature of violence between master and slave, white society did not limit its viciousness to white on black relationships. As Wyatt- Brown, Greenberg, Franklin, and others have pointed out, violence took place frequently between members of white southern society. This violence depended on the highly ritualized honor code that if violated could result in duels, fighting, and personal vendettas. Violence informed and underlined all of the public actions of elite white males, and thus the slaveholding class was eminently more familiar and predisposed to violence than their northern counterparts.
As the overarching paradigm of southern culture, honor remains the best way to understand Confederate military strategy. Determining the extent of southern honor’s influence during the war requires understanding what actions and beliefs allowed southerners to express their credentials as honorable men. Many historians argue that southern gentlemen emphasized courage, aggression, pride, a severe disdain for cowardice, and an exaggerated display of masculinity as manifestations of their honor. Impugning any of these values typically resulted in violence, often through brawling or dueling.
This thesis argues that the values of aggression, courage, and Confederate commanders’ need to protect their honor and masculinity shaped the operations of Confederate armies. The battles and campaigns of the Civil War reveal the markers of honor-driven behavior. The historical record of Confederate leaders’ decision making reflects the ways their cultural values affected their battle and campaign behavior. For example, the personal aggression that shaped operational or tactical-level decisions produced a consistent pattern of Confederate field commanders initiating contact with the enemy or pursuing Union forces at a higher rate 3 than their Union counterparts.
However, to separate this cultural aggression from Confederate commanders’ expected aggressiveness in the context of battlefield maneuver, the thesis also explores European tactics and more orthodox battlefield maneuver. While honor is the primary focus of this work, Confederate officers made decisions based on other factors, including military education, experience, and personal character. Battlefields during the nineteenth century were places of complexity and confusion. Fear, hunger, field conditions, personal motivations, chance, the “fog of war,” and technology all influenced the behavior of soldiers and their officers during battle.
This thesis acknowledges the complexities of warfare while focusing on one specific, and vital, factor shaping the behavior of Confederate commanders: honor. To evaluate the effects of aggressive tactical, operational, and strategic decisions, the thesis scrutinizes the course of the Civil War’s campaigns. To that end, it divides the war into two distinct phases: the Confederacy ascendant (opening moves to Gettysburg and Vicksburg) and the tide turned (Overland Campaign to the war’s end). In each of the phases, the thesis provides examples of Confederate commanders whose cultural background influenced their conduct, and offers battlefield examples of their aggressiveness, courage, and masculinity.
It also examines commanders’ efforts to avoid actions that might gain them the moniker of coward and how such concerns changed the way they led their men. The last of these points is particularly enlightening for understanding the role of southern culture in battle. For antebellum southern men, the social stigma associated with cowardice was a source of great shame. With the Confederate states at war, southern gentlemen suddenly had a national stage to prove their courage and masculinity in battle.
As Southern aristocrat and Confederate colonel 4 James B. Griffin wrote to his wife, explaining his desire to prove his masculinity, “I have so far never had the fortune to be engaged with the Enemy — I hope however, if it shall ever be my fortune to be engaged with them, that my conduct will be such, that if I do not merit your praise, will not cause you to feel ashamed.”2 Such motives shaped the behavior of southern commanders on campaign and resulted in a demonstrable difference in officer casualty rates between the two armies, in deaths of high ranking commanders, in the tendency of officers to overexpose themselves and their men to fire, and in a disdain for retreat. In effect, the cultural values of the Confederate officer class reflected the society-wide attachment to the heroic warrior, often at the expense of military common sense and the lives of Confederate soldiers. Despite the outcome of the Civil War, Confederate commanders have a historical reputation for being more effective than their Union counterparts.
But despite examples like Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson, were Confederate commanders more effective than their Union counterparts? Evaluating the South’s conduct of the war through a cultural lens inevitably leads to comparisons between the effectiveness of the two sides. The thesis will explore whether the Confederacy’s commanders’ adherence to their cultural norms helped or hurt their military’s chances on the battlefield. However, the thesis does not simply summarize the already well-worn historical debate over Confederate battle tactics, but locates the cultural imperatives that influenced those tactics.
Much of the research about Confederate tactics focuses on the South’s quest for a “decisive battle” and argues that Confederate commanders wasted their meager resources on the offensive, when defensive actions and guerrilla fighting might have sustained their efforts longer. This thesis approaches this debate obliquely, without passing judgment on 5 either argument.