The Cavalier Southern Community

Locating the Cavalier South

It is a mistake to talk about a Southern public or community. The communities we have been studying were active in the South too.
Also present in the South, however, was the cavalier community

One of three periods in American history when a great concentration of power was possessed by only a few
Aristocratic, large plantation and slave owners with political and economic power
Authority from inheritance and wealth
Strict barriers to entry, but sense of duty violated could leave you out

How they motivated slavery
How they built a unified Confederate identity and motivated sacrifice to prepare the Confederacy for war

An insular community without opposition. Thus, this was a closed community of discourse. In closed communities, revision is difficult because attacks on orthodoxy are not permitted. Thus, it tends to create a conservative community with rabid faith in its correctness.
Particularly important in regulating admission to public life

From beginning of American identity, the North/South split had been present.
Material differences between the sections

strategies in the rhetoric separated the South from the North as distinct social orders

Religion and nationhood have long been intertwined. The Catholic church controlled monarchs in its membership. The reformation permitted the emergence of nation-states which identified with protestant movements. Freedom of religion emerged with Madison's idea of factions in democracy. The result in America is a secular-religion contract: the state permits religious diversity in exchange for churches returning loyalty to the government.
Evangelical Christianity united religion in 1820s and 1830s. Third Great Awakening intensified religious experience. By 1861, the three major evangelical denominations -- Methodists (45%), Baptists (37%), and Presbyterians (12%) -- had 94% of the churches in the South.
By 1840, churches had begun to split into Northern and Southern Churches. This encouraged the myth of peaceful succession, became a precedent for sectional independence, and allowed development of different rhetorics of pulpit in North and South.
From the pulpit, the Southern clergy developed a justification for slavery. Built around Christian duty and responsibility of master and slave. Abolition was depicted as a secular attack on religion.

a rhetoric of race. Attributed material difference to superiority of the white race. Motivated power in the paternalism of racial responsibility.
a rhetoric of power differential. Material success proved superiority and justified exercise of power of cavalier class.
a rhetoric of responsibility of power rather than a rhetoric of equality

You are going from Georgia to attend college at the College of William and Mary. There you wish access to the parlors of Williamsburg and the college. How will you go about gaining that access?
It is the spring of 1861. You are in a parlor on the tidewater of Virginia debating whether Virginia should secede from the union to join the Southern Confederacy. Write a short speech in support of secession. Write a short speech against.
It is 1855 and you are in a Southern White Church. The sermon today is "The Responsibility of Our Race." What are some of the themes that you might hear?