An Education in Southern Masculinity

IN THE 1780s JOHN BALL SR., RECENTLY MARRIED TO HIS FIRST COUSIN and inheritor of several hundred acres on two plantations from his late father, assumed leadership of one of the South's wealthiest, most powerful families. Along with similarly prominent kin groups, including the Bulls and Pinckneys of John's native South Carolina and the Carrolls and Lees of the Chesapeake Bay region, the Balls had, by the Revolutionary era, enjoyed nearly a century of power and prestige in the South. (1) As rich, slaveholding planters with commercial ties throughout the Atlantic world, families such as these tended to monopolize political offices in their provincial governments as well as the paths to wealth and social prominence. Colonial assumptions about the importance of deference and the power of lineage, coupled with the synergetic economic and political domination of these men and their relatives, meant that few of the lesser sorts challenged gentry command of colonial society. (2) But as John Sr. took charge of the Ball patrimony in the midst of the American Revolution, the structures of colonial society and government--and the cultural assumptions that underlay them--had begun to erode. By the time John Sr.'s eldest son and namesake came of age at the turn of the nineteenth century, southern elites, who had enjoyed a long history of unchallenged mastery, faced a changing world. John Ball Jr. and his cohort numbered among the first sons of the United States. (3) In the wake of the American Revolution and during the transition to a market economy, personal accomplishments mattered more and family lineage mattered less. Increasingly, elite men needed to prove their merit to their peers rather than relying on inherited status from their families. Certainly the wealthy enjoyed easier access to education, refinement, reputation, and other determinants of social worth. However, this rising generation had to cultivate these attributes publicly in order to acquire the power their fathers had simply assumed. Simultaneously, slaveholding southerners heard the first rumblings of antislavery sentiment from the North. The questions thus arose: How could a nation founded on the principle of personal liberty deny freedom to African Americans and endorse slavery? Could one be a virtuous citizen of the republic and also be a slave owner? The answers remained unclear in the early republic; the questions alone, however, implicitly challenged the southern economy and southern gentry society. As boys of John Jr.'s age grew to manhood, the class and racial foundations of American society shifted beneath their feet. John Sr. and his wife, Jane Ball, thus faced a daunting task in rearing their offspring in the early republic. John Jr. had to prepare himself for a leadership position in southern society. His future prospects and the vitality of the Ball family hung in the balance. Sixteen-year-old John Ball Jr.'s departure for Harvard College in the summer of 1798 produced an intensive letter-writing effort on the part of his parents, aimed at steering the boy toward a proper education, code of masculine conduct, and respect for family duty--in short, toward the cultivation of leadership skills. (The parents preserved copies of their own letters but not those of their son.) (4) The surviving letters only hint at John Jr.'s reaction to the advice proffered. But they clearly define the masculine identity John Jr.'s parents expected him to adopt, a set of qualities that struck a balance between embracing national values and conserving southern customs. The Ball family correspondence thus provides a compelling look at white southern masculine ideals in the new nation, even as the South as a self-defined region first began to take shape. Indeed, John Sr.'s letters read like a prescriptive manual for achieving southern genteel manhood. Jane Ball also contributed to the grooming of John Jr., but as was typical among elite southern families, the father played the greater role in delineating the parameters of appropriate male behavior

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