Imagine my surprise and my pride in seeing my cousin’s daughter quoted by David Brooks in the New York Times. Lorien Foote is a Civil War historian at Texas A&M. She is utterly brilliant and a true expert in her field. (When she visited us in Virginia, we took a drive through Loudon County, during which time she explained what happened during the war at nearly every turn of the road.)
Anyway, she wrote a much-acclaimed book called The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army (New York University Press). David Brooks uses it as a jump-off point to criticize Donald Trump’s treatment of women. But her book has far more applications than that.
From David Brooks, The Sexual Politics of 2016 – The New York Times:
In the middle of the Civil War a colonel named Robert McAllister from the 11th Regiment of New Jersey tried to improve the moral fiber of his men. A Presbyterian railroad contractor in private life, he lobbied and preached against profanity, drinking, prostitution and gambling. Some of the line officers in the regiment, from less genteel backgrounds, rebelled.
They formed an organization called the Independent Order of Trumps. In sort of a mischievous, laddie way, the Trumps championed boozing and whoring, cursing and card-playing.
In her book “The Gentlemen and the Roughs,” Lorien Foote notes that this wasn’t just a battle over pleasure. It was a contest between two different ideals of masculinity. McAllister’s was based on gentlemanly chivalry and self-restraint. Trumpian masculinity was based on physical domination and sexual conquest. “Perceptions of manliness were deeply intertwined with perceptions of social status,” Foote writes.
And so it is today.
[Keep reading. . .]
Brooks goes on to lambaste the new “Trumpian masculinity” in the swaggering of Donald Trump, who brags about his sexual conquests, attacks other men by putting down their wives because of their looks, and has said that the best way to handle women is to treat them like dirt.
But Lorien’s book about these two kinds of masculinity during the civil war is absolutely brilliant scholarship; her stories about duels and brawls, self-less courage and blatant self-regard make it hard to put down; and what she says about honor–something both gentlemen and roughs cared greatly about, though it can hardly be found today–is genuinely inspiring.
HT: Joanna Hensley
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