Southern Violence and White Supremacy in the Civil War Era

Professor James Hill Welborn joins us to discuss the question – how did white Southerners in the nineteenth century reconcile a Christian faith that instructed them to turn the other cheek with a pervasive code of honor that instructed them to do just the opposite—to demand satisfaction for perceived insults? He analyzes the birth of this peculiar moral ethic and traces its increasing dominance across the American South in the buildup to the Civil War, as white Southerners sought to cloak a war fought in defense of slavery in the language of honor and Christian piety. Episode 577.