168 pages / 5.50 x 8.50 inches / 1 Map, 1 photo
History / American History | History / United States - Civil War Period | History / United States - Southern History
A powerful confluence of youthful energies and entrenched codes of honor enlivens Robert F. Pace's look at the world of male student college life in the antebellum South. Through extensive research into records, letters, and diaries of students and faculty from more than twenty institutions, Pace creates a vivid portrait of adolescent rebelliousness struggling with the ethic to cultivate a public face of industry, respect, and honesty. These future leaders confronted authority figures, made friends, studied, courted, frolicked, drank, gambled, cheated, and dueled--all within the established traditions of their southern culture.
For the sons of southern gentry, college life presented a variety of challenges, including engaging with northern professors and adjusting to living away from home and family. The young men extended the usual view of higher education as a bridge between childhood and adulthood, innovatively creating their own world of honor that prepared them for living in the larger southern society. Failure to obtain a good education was a grievous breach of honor for them, and Pace skillfully weaves together stories of student antics, trials, and triumphs within the broader male ethos of the Old South. When the Civil War erupted, many students left campus to become soldiers, defend their families, and preserve a way of life. By war's end, the code of honor had waned, changing the culture of southern colleges and universities forever.
Halls of Honor represents a significant update of E. Merton Coulter's 1928 classic work, College Life in the Old South, which focused on the University of Georgia. Pace's lively study will widen the discussion of antebellum southern college life for decades to come.
Robert F. Pace is a professor of history at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas; the coauthor of Frontier Texas: History of a Borderland to 1880; and the coeditor of "Fear God and Walk Humbly"
“Robert F. Pace’s lively book offers the flavor of college student life in the antebellum South. Crisply written and filled with entertaining quotes, one can almost feel the cramped beds that students slept in and hear the notes that a flute-playing dorm mate is playing through paper-thin walls. . . . Young college men and women today will experience pleasure in familiar complaints and will be surprised by the tribulations that have been left in a bygone era.”—Journal of the Early Republic
“All readers should be grateful to Professor Pace for reopening in graceful and lucid fashion an important and fascinating element of the history of higher education in the South.”—Alabama Review
“The strengths of Halls of Honor lie in its superb detail, source base, and focus on honor in the college setting. This easy-to-read and interesting book must become a building block for southern educational history.”—Journal of American History
“Halls of Honor is a good read--sometimes interesting, sometimes humorous, and always entertaining. At the heart of the narrative are the students who attended antebellum colleges and universities, entering as boys and leaving as men.”—Georgia Historical Quarterly
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