Southern Sons

"A compelling examination."

"Makes important contributions to historians' understandings of gender, family, and sectionalism."

"Insightful study."

"We read about young men who exhibited a lifelong negotiation with authority, with society's expectations, with one another, and eventually with the North... Well-written, meticulously researched."

"Glover convincingly revises the long-held thesis that honor is the best paradigm for investigating young Southern men's identities in the early national period."

"Glover successfully demonstrates that becoming a man in the early national South was a complicated process that demanded much of the boys who sought to be considered men."

"Glover carefully charts the empowerment which elite southern boys received over a lifetime of successfully navigating these social waters."

"Glover's new study of southern elite manhood in the new nation is an important contribution to southern history as well as to gender history."

"Southern Sons is an impressive work, certain to influence—and perhaps even reshape—Southern social and cultural history for years to come, as well as the history of American masculinities."

"Glover's analysis is insightful and rests on exhaustive research in reliable sources."

"An important book for anyone interested in gender, family history, or education in antebellum America. It is also a refreshing way to frame the origins of the American Civil War."

"Southern Sons provides insight into the day-to-day lives of young southern elites and offers a detailed examination of the process by which southern boys became southern men in the Early Republic."

"Southern Sons adds immeasurably to our understanding of gender relations in the antebellum South. Compellingly argued, lucidly written, and thoroughly researched, this work is a model of sensitive historical analysis. Especially valuable is her demonstration of the complexities in social relations between parents and sons, peers and kin, college authorities and their often immature students. She pursues the lives of these favored young slaveholders through their courtships, marriages, and arrival on the threshold of responsible adulthood. Throughout their development, Glover persuasively asserts, they sought to become 'men of honor' and refinement in the classic terms of their time and culture. This study will be highly acclaimed by ordinary readers well as scholars of American history."