Southern Sons
Becoming Men in the New Nation
Published on 12. April 2007
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-0-8018-8498-6 (ISBN)
Description
Between the generations of Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, the culture of white Southerners experienced significant changes, including the establishment of a normative male identity that exuded confidence, independence, and power. Southern Sons, the first work in masculinity studies to concentrate on the early South, explores how young men of the southern gentry came of age between the 1790s and the 1820s. Lorri Glover examines how standards for manhood came about, how young men experienced them in the early South, and how those values transformed many American sons into southern nationalists who ultimately would conspire to tear apart the republic they had been raised to lead. This was the first generation of boys raised to conceive of themselves as Americans, as well as the first cohort of self-defined southern men. They grew up believing that the fate of the American experiment in self-government depended on their ability to put away personal predispositions and perform prescribed roles. Because men faced demanding gender norms, boys had to pass exacting tests of manhood-in education, refinement, courting, careers, and slave mastery.
Only then could they join the ranks of the elite and claim power in society. Revealing the complex interplay of nationalism and regionalism in the lives of southern men, Glover brings new insight to the question of what led the South toward sectionalism and civil war.
Only then could they join the ranks of the elite and claim power in society. Revealing the complex interplay of nationalism and regionalism in the lives of southern men, Glover brings new insight to the question of what led the South toward sectionalism and civil war.
Reviews / Votes
A compelling examination. -- Giselle Roberts Civil War Book Review 2007 Makes important contributions to historians' understandings of gender, family, and sectionalism. -- Anya Jabour Journal of American History 2007 Insightful study... Recommended. Choice 2008 We read about young men who exhibited a lifelong negotiation with authority, with society's expectations, with one another, and eventually with the North... Well-written, meticulously researched. -- Evan A. Kontarinis Journal of the Early Republic 2007 Glover convincingly revises the long-held thesis that honor is the best paradigm for investigating young Southern men's identities in the early national period. -- Jennifer L. Gross H-NC, H-Net Reviews 2007 Glover successfully demonstrates that becoming a man in the early national South was a complicated process that demanded much of the boys who sought to be considered men. -- Charlene Boyer Lewis Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 2007 Glover carefully charts the empowerment which elite southern boys received over a lifetime of successfully navigating these social waters. -- R. Matthew Poteat Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review 2008 Glover's new study of southern elite manhood in the new nation is an important contribution to southern history as well as to gender history. -- Thomas A. Foster William and Mary Quarterly 2009 Southern Sons is an impressive work, certain to influence-and perhaps even reshape-Southern social and cultural history for years to come, as well as the history of American masculinities. -- Steve Tripp Historian 2009 Glover's analysis is insightful and rests on exhaustive research in reliable sources. -- Matthew Mason Southern Quarterly 2009 An important book for anyone interested in gender, family history, or education in antebellum America. It is also a refreshing way to frame the origins of the American Civil War. -- Michael DeGruccio H-CivWar 2008 Southern Sons provides insight into the day-to-day lives of young southern elites and offers a detailed examination of the process by which southern boys became southern men in the Early Republic. -- Ehren K. Foley Journal of Social History 2009More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Annotated edition
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 165 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
490 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-8498-6 (9780801884986)
DOI
10.1353/book.3318
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
11/2010
Johns Hopkins University Press
€35.30
Article not available for order
E-Book
04/2007
Johns Hopkins University Press
€20.99
Available for download
Person
Lorri Glover is the John Francis Bannon Professor in the Department of History at Saint Louis University. She is the author of All Our Relations: Blood Ties and Emotional Bonds among the Early South Carolina Gentry, also published by Johns Hopkins, and coauthor with Daniel Blake Smith of The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Sons
1. The First Duties of a Southern Boy
2. Raising ''Self Willed'' Sons
Part II: Gentlemen and Scholars
3. The Educational Aspirations of Southern Families
4. Creating Southern Schools for Southern Sons
5. The (Mis)Behaviors of Southern Collegians
6. The Southern Code of Gentlemanly Conduct
7. Acting the Part of a Gentleman
Part III: Patriarchs
8. Supervising Suitors
9. Winning a Wife
10. Professions and the ''Circle about Every Man''
11. Slaveholding and the Destiny of the Republic's Southern Sons
Epilogue
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
Introduction
Part I: Sons
1. The First Duties of a Southern Boy
2. Raising ''Self Willed'' Sons
Part II: Gentlemen and Scholars
3. The Educational Aspirations of Southern Families
4. Creating Southern Schools for Southern Sons
5. The (Mis)Behaviors of Southern Collegians
6. The Southern Code of Gentlemanly Conduct
7. Acting the Part of a Gentleman
Part III: Patriarchs
8. Supervising Suitors
9. Winning a Wife
10. Professions and the ''Circle about Every Man''
11. Slaveholding and the Destiny of the Republic's Southern Sons
Epilogue
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index