Southern chivalry

Representative Preston Brooks, who claimed the Southern code of honor as cause for physically attacking an abolitionist on the Congress floor; Condemned as "argument versus clubs" in one of many Northern caricatures of "Southern Chivalry"

Southern chivalry, or the Cavalier myth, was a popular concept describing the aristocratic honor culture of the Southern United States during the Antebellum, Civil War, and early Postbellum eras. The archetype of a Southern gentleman became popular as a chivalric ideal of the slaveowning planter class, emphasizing both familial and personal honor in addition to the ability to defend either by force if necessary. Southern chivalry is today seen as an attempt to justify the racist and patriarchal stratification of Southern society, with the goal of maintaining or legitimizing the human rights abuses of American slavery.^[1][2]

Prior to the Civil War this concept of a gentleman's honor was frequently used as a basis for duels and other forms of extrajudicial violence, most notably the caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks, and contributed to the militarization of the South by encouraging young men to be taught at military schools.

By the later Antebellum era, the term had taken on an ironic meaning for Northerners and abolitionists, among whom it was used as a pejorative to describe what was perceived as the barbarism of Southern slave owners and their hostility and duplicity in dealing with the North, as was particularly seen in various political caricatures before and during the war.

In the modern era the romanticization of Southern chivalry became a core aspect of the Lost Cause myth, which portrays the Confederate States of America as a morally and culturally superior civilization defending its honor against a materialistic and immoral North.