Twisted Honor

From William Douglas's Duelling Days in the Army (1887), p. v-vi:

"Dueling," said that clever, though rather eccentric philosophical writer, Mandeville, "is the tie of society, and although we are beholden to our frailties for the chief ingredient in it, there has been no virtue, at least" (he adds) "that I am acquainted with, which has proved half so instrumental to the civilizing of mankind; who, in great societies, would soon degenerate into cruel villains and treacherous slaves, were honour to be removed from among them."

But what is honour? The other day a captain in the Russian army stole some seventy pounds from a lady's bag, and when the money was found upon him he pulled out a revolver and shot himself, preferring death to the dishonour of being discovered to be a thief. The act did not of itself, seemingly in his opinion, dishonour him, it was simply in being found put; and this, we almost fancy, must have been Mandeville's opinion of it. Had the Russian officer just referred to got clear away with his plunder, and any one afterwards accused him of the theft, he would have called his accuser out, and thus vindicated his own honour. He might certainly have shot his opponent, but would still have remained what he was, namely, an undiscovered thief. Therefore, in whatever way we regard the subject, dueling at the best was but a relic of a barbarous age; and at the worst--well, we need not describe what that might be. That dueling should continue in the army, long after most stringent orders had been issued against it, is only what might reasonably be expected among men who had not only an inclination for fighting, but had the weapons, as a rule, ready to their hands.

Massinger on Honour

Philip Massinger (1583 - 1640) was an English dramatist. In his play, "A Very Woman," an old soldier provides this description of honor:

Speak the height of honour:
No man to offend,
Ne’er to reveal the secrets of a friend;
Rather to suffer than do a wrong;
To make the heart no stranger to the tongue,
Provok’d not to betray an enemy,
Nor eat his meat, I choke with flattery;
Blushes to tell wherefore I wear my scars,
Or for my conscience, or my country’s wars;
To aim at just things; if we have wildly run
Into offences--wish them all undone.
‘Tis poor in grief, for wrong done to die,
Honour to dare to live, and satisfy.

"Who General Washington Is"

Portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart

George Washington is foremost among America's men of honor, rivaled only by Robert E. Lee. The most famous portrait we have of Washington, the one that appears on the dollar bill, was painted by the English portrait artist Gilbert Stuart. Here is an anecdote demonstrating Washington's sense of himself. According to James Thomas Flexner’s Washington: The Indispensable Man, Washington and Stuart did not get on.

The portraitist usually kept his sitters amused and their faces alive by a flood of showy and outrageous talk. Washington always felt uneasy at having to remain still and being stared at and was put out rather than being amused. Stuart, who felt that “artists were fundamentally superior to all other men including Presidents, resented Washington’s formality. He could not forget what had resulted when, in trying to unstiffen the hero, he had gone to the length of saying, “Now, sir, you must let me forget that you are General Washington and I am Stuart the Painter. Washington replied (as it seemed to him politely), Mr. Stuart need never feel the need for forgetting who he is and who General Washington is.”

Washington's sense of who he was, and where he stood in relation to other men, was characteristic of the man of honor.

Some Observations on Honor

The following observations are from Edward L. Ayers' article, "Legacy of Violence," which appeared in American Heritage in 1991:

White women played crucial roles in a society based on honor. A man who blustered his way into a duel might win honor among his male compatriots, but women would decide the full meaning of that honor. It was often women who decided the boundaries of who was and was not admitted to proper society, who determined whether a man’s wife and family belonged. Many women refused to marry men who could not or would not defend their honor; no woman wanted to share in a dishonored name. And women’s chastity and behavior played a crucial role in maintaining a family’s honor, no matter how that honor had been won and no matter what class that family occupied.

Northern culture reviled Southern honor. “About certain silly abstractions that no practical businessman ever allows to occupy his time or attention they are eternally wrangling, and thus it is that rencounters, duels, homicides, and other demonstrations of violence have become so popular in all slaveholding communities,” writes one 1850’s observer. Puritan influenced Northern culture celebrated “dignity,” the belief that every white man at birth possesses an intrinsic value at least theoretically equal. Men were expected to shrug off insults that a man of the South was expected to resent. Restraint was valued over display. It was inward- rather than outward-looking. Dignity was more appropriate to a culture built on business, a culture centered around character, self-control, discipline, and delayed gratification.

Why the Aristocracy Was Violent

An interesting quote from the Italian sociologist and political philosopher Vilfredo Federico Damasco Pareto (1848-1923), writing in 1902:

A sign which almost invariably presages the decadence of an aristocracy is the intrusion of humanitarian feelings and of affected sentimentalizing which render the aristocracy incapable of defending its position. Violence, we should note, is not to be confused with force. Often enough one observes cases in which individuals and classes which have lost the force to maintain themselves in power make themselves more and more hated because of their outbursts of random violence. The strong man strikes only when it is absolutely necessary, and then nothing stops him. Trajan was strong, not violent; Caligula was violent, not strong.

When a living creature loses the sentiments which, in given circumstances are necessary to it in order to maintain the struggle for life, this is a certain sign of degeneration, for the absence of these sentiments will, sooner or later, entail the extinction of the species. The living creature which shrinks from giving blow for blow and from shedding its adversary’s blood thereby puts itself at the mercy of this adversary. The sheep has always found a wolf to devour it; if it now escapes this peril, it is only because man reserves it for his own prey. Any people which has horror of blood to the point of not knowing how to defend itself will sooner or later become the prey of some bellicose people or other. There is not perhaps on this globe a single foot of ground which has not been conquered by the sword at one time or other, and where the people occupying it have not maintained themselves on it by force.

The Values of a Warrior

From Morale and its Enemies (1918) by William Ernest Hocking.

In ancient and in feudal times, it was considered not that the soldier, but that most of the rest of society, was a little peculiar. City life, trade life, farm life, were supposed to sap the warlike temper and produce an unspirited human variety. The former contempt for the merchant was due not only to the idea that he was given over to an unmanly sort of competition, that he liked too well the rule of the civil order whereby everything must be got by wit and nothing by courage, that he too willingly forgot how far the security of that very rule depends on men of another fiber: it was due also, I presume, to sad experience in various attempts to turn him, in an emergency, into a warrior. For in the earlier stages of the division of labor, a very real division of mental quality took place with it, and these mental grooves between occupational groups tended to deepen. Agricultural populations became an easy prey to the wilder tribes about them; wealthy cities had to buy their protection from sounder-spirited professional fighters. Even to-day, the phrase "a nation of shopkeepers" has just enough sting in it to make the eagle and the lion squirm.

William Paley on Honor

In The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, vol. II, published in 1799, the English philosopher William Paley describes the law of honor:

The Law of Honour is a system of rules constructed by people of fashion, and calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one another; and for no other purpose.

Consequently, nothing is adverted to by the Law of Honour, but what tends to incommode this intercourse.

Hence this law only prescribes and regulates the duties betwixt equals; omitting such as relate to the Supreme Being, as well as those which we owe to our inferiors.

For which reason, profaneness, neglect of public worship or private devotion, cruelty to servants, rigorous treatment of tenants or other dependents, want of charity to the poor, injuries done to tradesmen by insolvency or delay of payment, with numberless examples of the same kind, are accounted no breaches of honour; because a man is not a less agreeable companion for these vices, nor the worse to deal with, in those concerns which are usually transacted between one gentleman and another.

Again, the Law of Honour being constituted by men occupied in the pursuit of pleasure, and for the mutual conveniency of such men, will be found, as might be expected from the character and design of the lawmakers, to be, in most instances, favourable to the licentious indulgence of the natural passions.

Thus it allows of fornication, adultery, drunkenness, prodigality, dueling, and of revenge in the extreme; and lays no stress upon the virtues opposite to these.