Robert F. Pace Responds to Christopher J. Olsen's review of _Halls of
Honor_:

Christopher J. Olsen has written a thoughtful and professional critique
of my book _Halls of Honor_. I would like to respond to a few of the
points he has raised.

To begin with, I believe Olsen has accurately described my intended
thesis in the book. For nearly eight decades, Coulter's _College Life in
the Old South_ (1928) has remained the only viable option for those who
wanted to know about the subject. I did not, however, want my study to
be a simple update of his work. As Olsen points out, I used a variety of
letters and other primary sources to form my own conceptual framework in
describing college men in the antebellum era. As he also points out, I
chose a broad variety of colleges with my criteria for timeframe being
1800-1860 for the first four chapters and 1860-1865 for the last
chapter. One weakness of this approach is that not every college that
existed in the antebellum South is represented, nor was I able to
demonstrate effectively any evolution during those decades. My defense
of the framework, however, is that I simply did not see significant
change in the "values, ideas, and ethics" that shaped college men over
that time frame, so I did not make that analysis a goal of the book.

A second area of Olsen's critique relates to my application of concepts
of the code of honor to the lives of these college students. He
accurately describes the research and understanding of honor in the
scholarly community as a "rambling ethic." I did have to focus aspects
of the ethic in this book to issues of appearance and "public
face"--mainly because that facet of the ethic is what kept popping up in
the primary sources from these students. What was most interesting to
me--and most challenging in presentation--was the fact that in the honor
ethic existed in a state of confusion and flux among college students
precisely because they were adolescents in transition to adulthood. They
did appear to create their own versions of the code, driven by the often
convoluted nature of adolescent relationships. There was a level of
volatility within their relationships because they had to wade through
BOTH the code of honor of their adult society and the confusion of
adolescence.

Based on this important mixture of forces (honor and adolescence), I
will respectfully disagree with one criticism Olsen puts forward in his
review. He points out that on page 32 of the book, I state: "Graduates
would never again have to be in a situation in which, on such a constant
basis, they would be in danger of losing face--of being humiliated
before their peers." For this statement it is important to understand
the context of adolescent volatility. Olsen asserts that this conclusion
"challenges the work of most previous students of southern honor, who
contend that no single triumph ever provided such security in the
uncertain world of southern honor and masculinity because both required
constant reaffirmation." I disagree. I stand by the statement for this
reason: of course the danger of losing face, of being humiliated, was
present daily in the lives of southerners who adhered to the code of
honor. However, never again would these men be confined to a physical
environment where they lived as adolescents, with adolescents, in such a
state of flux. Precisely because these students did not understand fully
the implications of their actions was what presented the danger. They
did not have the reasoning capabilities to foresee the potential
outcomes of their childish behaviors in a world of honor. Graduation was
a benchmark, a "single triumph" that sent them into the world and away
from the dangers presented by the college environment. Of course they
now had all new types of dangers and challenges to their honor--that
would never go away.

Despite that relatively small disagreement over interpretation, I am
grateful for Christopher Olsen's thoughtful and learned review. He has
"honored" me with his valuable critique.

Robert F. Pace
Department of History
McMurry University
Abilene, Texas

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