Description
Book SynopsisRevealing 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.
Trade ReviewA 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 2009
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
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
