Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era by Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai

Abstract

Reviewed by: Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era by Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai James J. Broomall Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era. Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8232-7182-5. 288pp., cloth, $35.00. Recent scholarship on nineteenth-century Americans has overturned historiographical orthodoxy. Characteristics once deemed strictly regional, southern honor and northern intellectualism, for example, have been reconsidered in revealing studies such as Lorien Foote’s The Gentleman and the Roughs and Timothy J. Williams’s Intellectual Manhood. In Northern Character, Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai joins this growing chorus and points out that honor shaped northern men. Its manifestations were, of course, markedly different across region. Unlike their southern counterparts who were shaped by public reputation, northerners’ honor was rooted “in an individual’s subconscious” (64). Focusing exclusively on elite New England colleges and their graduates, Wongsrichanalai seeks to understand how young men’s “socialization on college campuses in the antebellum period and continuing through their wartime and postwar experiences reveals the formation and application of northern honor” (2). He achieves this goal admirably with a highly readable and original account of the experiences of forty-nine young men—an influential group of leaders deemed “New Brahmins”—capably placed in and understood through the social, political, and military milieus of the Civil War era. Chronologically driven, the seven thematic chapters that comprise Northern Character are framed by a robust introduction that includes layered and useful historiographical and methodological discussions. Wongsrichanalai has a firm command of his material throughout the work and writes with clarity and confidence. Internal thematic chapter divisions guide the material and frame [End Page 332] the discussions. Lengthy methodological or historiographical conversations are, rightly, relegated to the footnotes and, when appropriate, included within the main text. In recounting the character and social vision of the New Brahmins, Northern Character is intellectual and social history at its best. The New Brahmins saw the Civil War as a chance to “test their character,” which Wongsrichanalai defines as “an idealized internal standard of behavior consisting most importantly of educated, independent thought, and selfless action” (88, 62, italics in original). These young men felt obligated to protect the Union and hoped war would strengthen northern patriotism and resolve. Interestingly, like the soldiers found in Reid Mitchell’s The Vacant Chair, the New Brahmins were concerned with legacy, but rather than using domestic imagery to frame military service they instead looked to public obligations and national character. This finding is particularly revealing in explaining the ease with which white Americans reconciled in the postbellum era. The New Brahmins chastised southern gentlemen “for failing to develop the region and setting good examples for other southerners to emulate,” which resulted in civil war (113). Conversely, Confederate soldiers were deemed brave men who were fighting an “unjust war instigated by unnamed politicians” (126). Once down south, the New Brahmins saw ample opportunities for development and industrial improvement; these experiences directed their vision for Reconstruction. In the postbellum era, the New Brahmins prescribed character-based education, social reform, and political vigilance and hoped an active government would advance a limited Reconstruction policy (167). Wongsrichanalai is at his best when describing ideas and crafting an individual group’s generational experience. This difficult work has been accomplished admirably. Less developed is the book’s cultural reading of evidence and individuals. The author readily acknowledges the New Brahmin’s foibles but does not always apply the same scrutiny in considering their writings as cultural products. In projecting their attainment of character through letters home, the New Brahmins were constructing self-conscious portraits of themselves. In writing home from college, they proudly related how they disdained bad habits and focused exclusively on their studies, and once they took the field of battle they leveled claims of bravery, daring, and presence of mind that far surpassed their contemporaries (69–70, 137, 155–61). Granted, these were remarkable young men who held themselves to high codes of conduct, [End Page 333] but Wongsrichanalai might have better highlighted how the New Brahmins’ personal obsessions with public reputation directly shaped the construction and...