Honor And Slavery In The Antebellum South

Parallels

To southern men, honor was everything. I dictated their standing in society, whether or not they could own slaves; it basically was a secret caste system. A man held in the highest honor experienced a good life from a social stance in the south. The honor system used in the south was related to the language used by southern gentlemen.# Honor and Slavery by Kenneth S. Greenburg attempts to explain the vernacular and customs used by men in the antebellum south. It would be hard for a person in today's society to understand the way honor was shown; it would have even been a challenge for men living in the Northern United States to understand at that time.# As Greenburg states, "Since the language of honor was the dominant language of the men who ruled the slave South, we will never understand masters, the nature of slavery, or the Civil war without first understanding that language."# To be a powerful man in the south, society also had to consider you to be an honorable man. Honor and power in the South were parallel to each other; a man with a high honor ranking was usually a prominent member of society.# The white gentlemen of the South used honor as a means for running society and it slightly resembled a monarchic society, as if a person was
For a man to duel he had to be an accomplished and honorable man; slaves simply were not viewed this way. However, slaves had honor amongst themselves. For example, some slaves thought it honorable to die without fear of death. They would not want to give a white person the satisfaction of crying out in pain while being beaten. Also, a slave could never accuse his master of lying or he would almost always be beaten to death.# It did not matter if the master was lying because he was the one with honor. The one with honor controlled what was true and what was