"Scalawags," Southern Honor, and the Lost Cause: Explaining the Fatal Encounter of James H. Cosgrove and Edward L. Pierson
2011; Southern Historical Association; Volume: 77; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-6893
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoON THE MORNING OF DECEMBER 26, 1875, JAMES H. COSGROVE AND Edward L. Pierson, two white men in their early thirties, both them natives Louisiana and Confederate veterans, encountered each other on street in town Natchitoches. Over course previous year, Cosgrove, editor fiercely Democratic Natchitoches People's Vindicator, had described Pierson, Republican member state legislature and editor Natchitoches Republican, as thief, liar, coward, and, when Confederate soldier, serial deserter. Pierson demanded satisfaction by posting card in People's Vindicator. Cosgrove contemptuously rejected challenge and published another scurrilous attack; Pierson thereupon vowed to shoot Cosgrove on sight. On morning in question two men exchanged curses; Cosgrove slapped Pierson's face with his hat; Pierson shot at Cosgrove and missed. Cosgrove then went into saloon and borrowed gun, and two men exchanged shots. Cosgrove proved better marksman. Pierson, mortally wounded, died within hour. (1) Given propensity southern white men to settle quarrels by means knives and guns, it could be argued that Cosgrove-Pierson affair was less reflection Reconstruction than an expression long-established cultural tradition. Thanks to scholars such as Edward L. Ayers, Kenneth S. Greenberg, and, in particular, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, we have good understanding how honor functioned in southern society and why kind ritualized personal violence between white males, including gentlemen, occurred so often. In antebellum years, dueling and affrays over questions personal honor--frequently involving politicians and newspaper editors--had been common. (2) Moreover, this did simply disappear after Appomattox: honor continued to function as what Dan T. Carter has described as a strong unwritten code behavior that governed nature and limits of personal violence. In postwar Gilles Vandal has found, leading members both rural and urban communities regularly resorted to duels and deadly fights to settle quarrels. (3) Historians Reconstruction, however, have paid little attention to honor when discussing that time. Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, for example, contains no mention honor. Scholars who do note persistence honor-related altercations treat them as basically apolitical: continuation, or degradation, antebellum mores that had little connection with politically motivated violence counter-Reconstruction. Although Vandal concludes that politics was main root violence in Reconstructed Louisiana, he places honor killings in separate category. (4) Even studies that focus explicitly on political violence either neglect honor entirely or downplay cultural explanations. Instead, these works emphasize organized character political violence, describing campaigns intimidation employed in service Democratic Party, which became increasingly militaristic after suppression Ku Klux Klan. Violence was at heart new [Democratic] strategy, writes Michael Perman, it was carried out in open by organized bands or by paramilitary detachments. The targets this organized violence, according to Perman, were not so individuals as the structures and institutions Reconstruction government (although many individuals, course, became casualties). Even when these personal conflicts originated in political quarrels, moreover, political motive was rarely decisive: was occasion for such violence but its fundamental cause. Viewed in this light, Cosgrove and Pierson were so much resorting to violence to further political ends as acting according to an unwritten code they had learned long before Reconstruction. …
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