In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

27 From Social Relations in Our Southern States Daniel R. Hundley Daniel Hundley remains famous, in Fred Hobson’s description, as “the author of a book undertaken largely to defend and justify the South but which became, despite its author’s intents, a book more critical of the South than anything else written by an inhabitant of the Deep South in the years just preceding the Civil War” (64). This extract, Hundley’s account of the descent of a typical “Southern Bully” to the position of “peripatetical blackleg, gambling for a living,” is a good case in point. Though Hundley is careful to note that the dissipated “Southern Bully” was only one member of the blackleg family, this extract remains a unique nineteenth-century attempt to define the riverboat gambler as a particular social type. For more information see Fred Hobson, Tell about the South: The Southern Rage to Explain (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983). Not Plug Uglies and Rip Raps do we purpose to discourse about at this time, gentle reader, for such doughty shoulder-hitters and short-boys are not the necessary out-growth of Southern institutions, but only vegetate in the purlieus of the cities of the South, just as Dead Rabbits, et id omne genus of outcasts and vagabonds, grow up within the shadows of the marble palaces, gothic churches, and iron front five-storied warehouses of the cities of the North. But there is in most of the Southern States a species of Bully entirely distinct from the above—a swearing, tobacco-chewing, brandy drinking Bully, whose chief delight is to hang about the doors of village groggeries and tavern tap-rooms, to fight chicken cocks, to play Old Sledge, or pitchand -toss, chuck-a-luck, and the like, as well as to encourage dog-fights, and occasionally to get up a little raw-head-and-bloody-bones affair on his own account. This is the Southern Bully par excellence, for in all the world else his exact counterpart is no where to be found. [. . .] This style of Southern Bully is found more often in the Cotton States, than elsewhere; which is owing to the fact, that fortunes are more frequently made in those States than in any others, by ignorant men—overseers, negro Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men 28­ traders, and others of a similar class. For it is the son of the vilest of the Southern Yankees, who usually, no matter how great his wealth may be, does not even approach the comparative respectability of a Cotton Snob, but is nothing more nor less than a bully—an ignorant, purse-proud, self-conceited, guzzling, fox-hunting, blaspheming, slave-whipping, uproarious, vulgar fellow ! who is at all times as willing and ready to pink a fellow-being as to wing a pheasant, or to shoot a hare. Even if sent to college, (which sometimes does happen, since his father, however ignorant, is yet anxious that his son shall know more than himself,) he seldom learns any thing from books, and cares for nothing but his daily drams, his cocktails, and brandy-straights, his pistols and his cards, his dogs and his sooty mistress, and, greatest knave of all, himself! While at college, however, he lives extravagantly, though but meanly supplied with funds by his miserly parent; and, as a matter of course, is always over head and ears in debt. But wo to the poor tradesman who menaces him with a bill! The Honorable Algernon Percy Deuceace, worthy scion of the noble house of Crabbs, knew not better how to brain a dunning tailor or starving cobbler, than does the warm-hearted noble-souled Southern Bully, of good family and respectable standing. And as for presenting one of the son’s bills to his miserly father, were we an honest storekeeper, we should much prefer to bear in patience with the wrath of the hot-headed juvenile, than to run the risk of encountering the supercilious frowns of his honorable sire. When the rich Southern Bully comes into the possession of his estates, his first care is to fill his cellars (in case he has any, otherwise his storeroom ) with barrels of Old Rye, as well as brandy, gin, rum, and other kinds of strong waters, but rarely with any thing in the shape of wine. Wine may do for babes, but not for such a puissant gentleman as he fancies himself to be. Having laid in his stock of liquors...

Share