The Art of Manliness - Episode #41： The Gentlemen and the Roughs with Dr. Lorien Foote

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well uh if you

00:00:21.620 were reading the site a few months ago you probably saw that massive series we did on

00:00:26.300 the history of manly honor in the west and in one of the articles we wrote we focused on what honor

00:00:32.560 meant to men living in the american north at the time of the civil war and one of the sources we

00:00:39.660 used for that article was a book called the gentleman in the roughs manhood honor and

00:00:45.220 violence in the union army a fascinating read very good book and today we're lucky enough to have the

00:00:51.360 author of that book on the podcast her name is dr lorian foot she is a professor of history at the

00:00:57.080 university of central arkansas she's also a fellow okie and a fellow sooner she was from oklahoma

00:01:02.920 originally and she got her phd in american history from the university of oklahoma and uh so we're

00:01:09.540 going to talk to dr lorian foot today about the history of manly honor in the union army

00:01:15.520 well uh welcome to the show lorian foot i really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us

00:01:22.260 today thank you i'm just thrilled to talk to you i love your site oh well thank you very much so your

00:01:27.980 book uh the gentleman in the roughs uh it's violence honor and manhood in the union army um how did you

00:01:35.760 get interested what piqued your interest to start researching about honor and manhood specifically in

00:01:42.880 the union army during the civil war because it's such a such a narrow topic what what piqued your

00:01:47.620 interest to research that well what happened this book actually evolved out of the sources because i

00:01:54.220 didn't originally intend to write about this i was interested in questions of discipline and military

00:01:59.380 justice so i'd gone to the national archives to read court martial records and as i was reading these

00:02:06.240 cases they just raised all these questions for me about honor about manhood um so for example i'd be

00:02:14.600 reading trials of men who were court-martialed for conduct and becoming an officer and a gentleman

00:02:19.520 and in some cases these were men who had shot an opponent or beaten somebody up and it would be a 50 or 60

00:02:28.080 page trial and 10 to 15 pages of it would be long discussions about whether or not this person had used 0.99

00:02:35.940 the phrase a son of a bitch and i'm thinking okay he killed somebody so why do they care whether he 0.99

00:02:42.220 said son of a bitch while he killed someone and you know those kind of questions led me down the road 0.99

00:02:49.420 of looking at how these men conceived of honor and how they conceived of manliness and it was really 0.99

00:02:55.440 driven by what i found in the sources well that that's fascinating um so let's talk a little bit about

00:03:00.960 that because it's it's a lot more complicated than you think a lot of people think honor it's oh you

00:03:05.580 know i know what honor means and uh of course you you don't need to write a whole book about how

00:03:11.240 men and women uh perceived honor um but you found that there was actually honor for the union soldiers

00:03:20.240 was sort of this there was two kind of main threads but it was sort of ambiguous sometimes

00:03:25.340 you had one view and then sometimes you could slip into this other view so it was like the honor

00:03:29.720 of the gentleman and then the honor of the roughs can you kind of briefly explain

00:03:33.600 uh what those two types of honor meant to these guys sure and and let me do it by by rephrasing a

00:03:41.720 little bit how how we think about honor because one of the things that that i found when people think

00:03:47.980 about that concept and it was a mistake that i made as well is they think of honor almost synonymously

00:03:54.160 with virtue when i talk to people about the book i've noticed that they think of honor as being someone

00:04:00.200 with good character and honor is a is a particular way of of looking at the world where you only have

00:04:07.840 as much worth as other people give to you and so you truly can't have any self-esteem or any sense of

00:04:15.260 self-worth unless your peers recognize your claim and so that definition of honor applies to different

00:04:22.580 cultures in different groups in different periods of history in different places in the world so if we

00:04:28.420 look at the united states and the confederacy during the civil war we can apply that definition of honor

00:04:35.880 and say okay what groups lived by that definition and then how do they display honor so what i found was

00:04:43.560 a difference in how men displayed honor so for both the roughs and the gentlemen their self-worth comes

00:04:50.520 from whether their peers give them worth whether they have public recognition of what they're

00:04:57.160 claiming but they have very different rituals about how they display their honor and what they do if

00:05:03.100 they're shamed in front of other people okay so just i guess to clarify for the readers the roughs

00:05:09.400 were uh primarily lower class right uh immigrants and the and they're usually the infantrymen typically

00:05:16.980 roughs are men from the lowest socioeconomic classes in the north and they can be both immigrants but

00:05:24.000 also um they could be rural farm laborers men who didn't have property and who were moving from place

00:05:31.140 to place trying to find work so regiments from indiana and illinois um had men in them that they called

00:05:37.880 roughs and these men generally weren't immigrants they were native-born americans but they were men without

00:05:43.220 without property without education on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder and in the roughs their

00:05:49.860 version of honor was very much a if you are shamed in public it is a violent response and and they proved their

00:06:00.980 manhood through rituals that showed that they could take and give pain so they got reputation among their peers by showing how tough

00:06:10.820 they were that they could give pain that they could take it in brutal fights yeah you uh i remember you called

00:06:17.260 they called them rough and tumbles right yes can you describe like what a rough and tumble exactly is what

00:06:23.820 it entails sure a rough and tumble is they would call it and it's also a no holds barred fight where there's

00:06:30.360 basically no rules and you put two men um you know inside a ring where other men are watching and they just

00:06:37.600 fight each other using their hands until one of them is incapacitated and cannot go on and there was often eye gouging

00:06:44.000 that was the thing that surprised me yes and i mean particularly that comes from men in in the rural areas but yeah men would

00:06:51.660 actually grow um fingernails several inches long um in order to use that as a weapon to gouge out somebody's eye and of course

00:07:00.260 because in honor it's about this reputation for toughness for these guys if you had an eye missing

00:07:06.860 from one of these fights i mean it was actually a mark of honor wow and and so not only was violence a part

00:07:13.800 of it i also you also talk about how uh drinking was an important aspect of displaying honor manhood

00:07:20.300 amongst the roughs as well yes i mean it's how much liquor can you consume you know how how much can you

00:07:26.260 drink and then of course the the liquor led to a lot of the fighting as well okay so that was the

00:07:32.660 honor of the roughs what about the gentlemen so these were typically upper class and they were officers

00:07:37.200 correct right and even though there were men who considered themselves gentlemen who who would have

00:07:42.960 been in the infantry as well um but generally the gentlemen are men who who have some kind of um economic

00:07:50.920 status education they're recognized in society um as gentlemen and then for them they cannot endure a

00:08:00.980 public insult and neither can the rust but for a gentleman your response is is i guess in some ways

00:08:07.780 more refined it's still a violent response but it's a challenge so if you receive a verbal insult as a

00:08:15.300 gentleman you have to respond to that with a public vindication by showing that you are willing to 0.86

00:08:20.720 fight to defend your honor um so if somebody you know liar puppy coward words like that if those 0.91

00:08:30.320 words are applied to another man that's an indication that you have shamed him and a man of 0.88

00:08:35.060 honor among the gentleman class will know that he now has to vindicate himself publicly by responding

00:08:41.040 with an offer to fight and how was what was the form of fighting was it like rough and tumbles or

00:08:46.000 do they actually use dual gentlemen would not um would not do a rough and tumble fight generally it's a

00:08:51.520 formal um either written offer to duel or there are some men um in some regions of the union who the

00:09:02.800 fight would be a fist fight or um some of them did offer to shoot at each other's with pistols but it

00:09:10.080 wasn't quite the same form as a duel so how did that uh you talk about this too in your book um

00:09:15.800 dueling was illegal uh in the military yes how did they get around that and um i mean what sort of

00:09:23.220 conflict did that have with these men where they they had to you know vindicate themselves but at the

00:09:28.660 same time the military was saying no you can't do that right well where it really places a lot of the

00:09:35.060 pressure is on some of the officers of the regiment so men who are the lieutenants and the captains

00:09:41.340 because no one would be prosecuted unless an officer brings a charge against someone so what we see is

00:09:49.520 that in some regiments men do these fights of honor and they never even get prosecuted because their

00:09:54.220 officers believe in that kind of honor and so their officers just aren't going to bring charges against

00:09:59.400 them for men who do get formally charged um you know it's a real issue because they have to defend

00:10:06.680 themselves and claim that they are gentlemen which is why they had to defend their honor but yet the

00:10:12.100 military has told them to do this is not gentlemanly and you know that so now they feel the shame of being

00:10:19.920 put on trial for what they've done and it creates a lot of conflict for them internally but also conflict

00:10:26.220 among officers and i think that's why we see that it's the the cases of men who are charged with

00:10:32.960 dueling that there is the most inconsistent application of justice that there is in the

00:10:39.060 union army i mean there's some men who are found guilty some men who are found not guilty and it just

00:10:44.360 depends on whether the members of the court martial who are trying the case agree that dueling is a form

00:10:50.500 of honor we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show 0.98

00:10:56.280 and then you'd like you said sometimes like the fact that if they said son of a bitch would when you 0.97

00:11:03.280 killed when that would that would change things somehow yes well because what what's interesting 0.97

00:11:08.040 about it is you can be charged during the civil war under the 83rd article of war with conduct and

00:11:13.320 becoming an officer and a gentleman and then what that conduct is is what has to be proved in the trial

00:11:19.960 and then you have to prove that that conduct is not the conduct of a gentleman so those were some of

00:11:25.160 my favorite cases because there were many men in the union army who believe that profanity is one of

00:11:31.340 the worst vices that it's using profane language corrupts your mind and then leads you down the path to

00:11:37.480 other vices to sexual immorality or to drinking so they view profanity as truly an act that no gentleman

00:11:44.460 would ever publicly use whereas for other men um speaking in that kind of language is part of their

00:11:50.460 display of manliness i mean they curse and they drink and they fight so it it really becomes a place

00:11:57.120 where these different definitions of manhood get fought out is in these trials where an officer

00:12:02.420 uses a phrase like that and another thing i thought was fascinating the difference between the roughs and

00:12:08.660 the gentlemen uh it seems like the honor of the roughs of the on the manhood of the roughs was very

00:12:13.220 passionate and uh you know as soon as something happened you had to respond right away and the

00:12:19.040 gentlemen seemed a little bit more reserved and i liked how they described it as you know you had to

00:12:23.940 keep your cool that was the the goal of the the gentleman can you describe the that sort of like stoic

00:12:29.800 honor that those guys had yes so the idea of being cool is that in any circumstance you can act with

00:12:38.100 complete calm and indifference as if nothing unusual is happening to you so i mean in in battle you would

00:12:45.520 be walking through this hail of bullets and shrapnel and and and walking as calmly as if you were just

00:12:52.020 walking down the street at home and if somebody is in your face insulting you you are responding

00:12:57.960 you know cleverly making jokes but just as if nothing was wrong and so that's what's interesting

00:13:04.480 because the gentleman i mean a duel you could kill someone but in their mind what's key is that

00:13:11.280 their violence is restrained they're only going to display violence in a ritual under certain

00:13:17.400 circumstances that show that their violence is under their control whereas with the roughs their violence 1.00

00:13:24.680 is out of control and another i thought was interesting too as well is that idea of being in control

00:13:31.760 um the temperance movement was really big amongst uh the the gentleman the officer class and i thought

00:13:39.740 that was there's also very humorous uh antidotes where uh the officers would try to start temperance

00:13:46.120 uh movements amongst their men and the men would sort of rebel against that the infantrymen would

00:13:50.560 yes now even though and that's what's interesting i think that's why in so many companies and regiments

00:13:56.920 in the union army there ends up being a lot of conflict between men because there are infantrymen

00:14:04.140 in private who they also believe in a manliness that has a lot of moral character and you don't drink

00:14:11.320 and you don't curse and so sometimes you have officers allied with their enlisted men whereas there's

00:14:17.740 other officers and other enlisted men who drink and fight and when these men get together in the same

00:14:23.760 regiment it can really cause conflict so i think one of the stories that i told in the book is is in

00:14:28.560 one particular regiment there are some officers who have temperance meetings um with some of the men

00:14:33.840 in their regiment and those so then some of the other men in the regiment throw mule urine on their

00:14:38.940 tent when they're trying to meet and then there's another regiment where officers and men form an

00:14:44.560 anti-temperance society and you know where they say the purpose of their society is to drink as much as

00:14:50.580 possible and and so that's what i think is interesting is that sometimes gentlemen have

00:14:55.700 men i think who are hoping someday to become gentlemen themselves that that want to display

00:15:01.660 these values of gentility and refinement let's talk a little bit about the conf the conflict between the

00:15:07.340 rest and the gentlemen because that was another very fascinating part of your book um because these

00:15:11.940 are two completely different ideas of manhood uh one you have more refined more uh you have to be in

00:15:18.640 control of your emotions the other one is more violent um and you just you act whenever you need

00:15:23.660 to act um how did besides the temperance uh issue how else did that conflict arise are there any

00:15:29.860 instances in particular where it really you found there's like a perfect example of these two conflicting

00:15:35.640 views of manhood and honor um butting heads i think a big way that i thought was in the issue of

00:15:42.420 cleanliness this is a time period where americans are only just now coming to embrace the idea of

00:15:49.640 bathing and um you know taking good care of themselves and uh so gentlemen part of their

00:15:56.800 belief in what makes you a man is that you are clean in your presentation of yourself clean clothes clean nails

00:16:06.200 your hair is trimmed and i mean the rust we have to picture that these men are dirty and that they have

00:16:12.460 long hair and untamed hair and that they revel in that as part of their manliness and so when you have

00:16:18.380 genteel officers some of them want to clean up these men they want to force them to cut their hair they

00:16:23.640 want to force them to to take a bath two or three times a week and there was a lot of conflict over

00:16:28.640 that issue so did um the i know one aspect of the the honor of the gentleman was you weren't supposed

00:16:35.280 to ever duel or fight someone that was beneath you yes but were there instances where that was ignored

00:16:42.580 and they actually did you know duked it out with someone from the rough class um well duked it out yes but

00:16:50.560 not in a sense that they would call it a duel so what i found is that officers who were gentlemen

00:16:56.080 when they were trying to discipline or punish rust they would inflict incredible physical corporal

00:17:02.840 punishment on these men beat them kick them tie them up um you know use water torture on them in some

00:17:10.240 cases so they're using very physical punishments but that's in their capacity as an officer to an

00:17:16.620 enlisted men they would never have fought with any of these men you know with their uniform off or

00:17:24.780 um you know just as an issue a personal issue between them yeah that's interesting about the um

00:17:31.280 the bars right like they talked about the roughs would talk about the to the gentleman oh it's only 0.95

00:17:36.540 those bars that are keeping you safe you didn't have those bars on you i would i'd give you a licking 1.00

00:17:40.920 yeah if you take off those shoulder straps and and fight me yeah they were always because they knew

00:17:46.100 of course with army regulations trying to impose the automatic obedience of privates to officers

00:17:52.600 i mean you could really you could face the death penalty if you hit an officer so it was important

00:18:00.100 for these soldiers when they were trying to assert their manhood to these officers they wanted these

00:18:04.840 officers to take off their uniforms go outside the lines of the camp you know and fight it out man to

00:18:10.600 man and i think it was also an assertion of their equality to these officers so how so a lot of

00:18:18.540 uh the focus on the history of honor in america typically focuses on southern or confederate honor

00:18:24.640 right because that you know the south's very famous for their honor culture how did the i mean in your

00:18:30.240 research have you what's the difference between southern honor and the honor of northern men

00:18:35.160 well i think the biggest difference is just that there's a class of northern men

00:18:41.680 who they would they would have a ritual of honor where they would issue a verbal offer to fight

00:18:49.160 and if someone calls them a coward they'll say okay let's let's go fight and by that they just mean

00:18:54.600 kind of a fist fight whereas for southerners they really do embrace that ritual of the duel and there

00:19:01.440 were northern men who dueled and that's what i think my book brings out and makes clear

00:19:05.800 um but i think the dueling ritual was was much more widespread in in the south

00:19:11.900 but i think part of what i'm trying to argue in the book and and what has has seemed to resonate

00:19:21.140 with historians who have read the book is that there wasn't as big a difference between northern

00:19:25.760 and southern honor as we have tried to claim very interesting um so how did the civil war

00:19:32.600 do you think shaped america's conception of honor and manhood i mean do we still see these strands

00:19:39.220 today or did one form of honor win out um i mean what what's your take on that well i think i think

00:19:46.580 that dueling as a ritual um the civil war kind of is part of a process of putting an end to that

00:19:53.840 but certain ways of thinking about honor i think the civil war actually gives a shot in the arm to

00:20:00.100 because i mean both sides viewed the war itself as a test of honor they i mean men talk about this

00:20:06.320 this we're fighting for the honor of our nation or the honor of our state or so they think about it in

00:20:12.880 terms of honor and historians who have looked in at the philippine war for example have found that men

00:20:19.720 use a lot of the language of honor in talking about the philippine war and why that war needs to be fought

00:20:26.240 and why some of the men fight in the war i've got to to show my honor in this war so i think

00:20:32.120 in terms of men thinking about i have i have or the section of the country that i live in or then even

00:20:40.160 my country has honor that must be defended that must be fought for i think that way of thinking

00:20:47.140 really continues to today and i think it's interesting because sometimes when i've made

00:20:52.080 presentations about my book and there have been veterans in the audience i mean they'll come up

00:20:56.020 and say it's still like that in the military they'll say this doesn't sound that different to

00:21:01.220 me well dr foote thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us thank you i really appreciate

00:21:07.480 the opportunity to talk about my work our guest today was dr laurian foote she's the author of the

00:21:13.580 book the gentleman in the roughs violence honor and manhood in the union in the union army and you

00:21:18.180 can pick up her book on amazon.com well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:21:27.060 for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:21:30.820 art of manliness.com and until next time stay manly

00:21:48.180 you

The Art of Manliness - April 04, 2014

Episode #41： The Gentlemen and the Roughs with Dr. Lorien Foote

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