insult or honor essay

Module 11: Cotton Is King — The Antebellum South (1800-1860)

Southern culture of honor, learning objectives.

• Describe the Southern culture of honor

Honor in the South

Figure 1 . “The Modern Tribunal and Arbiter of Men’s Differences,” an illustration that appeared on the cover of The Mascot, a newspaper published in nineteenth-century New Orleans, reveals the importance of dueling in southern culture; it shows men bowing before an altar on which are laid a pistol and knife.

A complicated code of honor among privileged White southerners, dictating the beliefs and behavior of “gentlemen” and “ladies,” developed in the antebellum years. Maintaining appearances and reputation was supremely important. It can be argued that, as in many societies, the concept of honor in the antebellum South had much to do with control over dependents, whether enslaved people, wives, or relatives. Defending their honor and ensuring that they received proper respect became preoccupations of White people in the slave states of the South. To question another man’s assertions was to call his honor and reputation into question. Insults in the form of words or behavior, such as calling someone a coward, could trigger a rupture that might well end on the dueling ground. Dueling had largely disappeared in the antebellum North by the early nineteenth century, but it remained an important part of the southern code of honor through the Civil War years. Southern White men, especially those of high social status, settled their differences with duels, before which antagonists usually attempted reconciliation, often through the exchange of letters addressing the alleged insult. If the challenger was not satisfied by the exchange, a duel would often result.

The formal duel exemplified the code in action. If two men could not settle a dispute through the arbitration of their friends, they would exchange pistol shots to prove their equal honor status. Duelists arranged a secluded meeting, chose from a set of deadly weapons, and risked their lives as they clashed with swords or fired pistols at one another. Some of the most illustrious men in American history participated in a duel at some point during their lives, including President Andrew Jackson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and U.S. senators Henry Clay and Thomas Hart Benton. In all but Burr’s case, dueling helped elevate these men to prominence.

Violence among the lower classes, especially those in the backcountry, involved fistfights and shoot-outs. Tactics included the sharpening of fingernails and filing of teeth into razor-sharp points, which would be used to gouge eyes and bite off ears and noses. In a duel, a gentleman achieved recognition by risking his life rather than killing his opponent, whereas those involved in rough-and-tumble fighting achieved victory through maiming their opponent.

The legal system was partially to blame for the prevalence of violence in the Old South. Although states and territories had laws against murder, rape, and various other forms of violence, including specific laws against dueling, upper-class southerners were rarely prosecuted, and juries often acquitted the accused. Despite the fact that hundreds of duelists fought and killed one another, there is little evidence that many duelists faced prosecution, and only one, Timothy Bennett (of Belleville, Illinois), was ever executed. By contrast, prosecutors routinely sought cases against lower-class southerners, who were found guilty in greater numbers than their wealthier counterparts.

The dispute between South Carolina’s James Hammond and his erstwhile friend (and brother-in-law) Wade Hampton II illustrates the southern culture of honor and the place of the duel in that culture. A strong friendship bound Hammond and Hampton together. Both stood at the top of South Carolina’s society as successful, married plantation owners involved in state politics. Prior to his election as governor of the state in 1842, Hammond became sexually involved with each of Hampton’s four teenage daughters, who were his nieces by marriage. “[A]ll of them rushing on every occasion into my arms,” Hammond confided in his private diary, “covering me with kisses, lolling on my lap, pressing their bodies almost into mine . . . and permitting my hands to stray unchecked.” Hampton found out about these dalliances, and in keeping with the code of honor, could have demanded a duel with Hammond. However, Hampton instead tried to use the liaisons to destroy his former friend politically. This effort proved disastrous for Hampton, because it represented a violation of the southern code of honor. “As matters now stand,” Hammond wrote, “he [Hampton] is a convicted dastard who, not having nerve to redress his own wrongs, put forward bullies to do it for him. . . . To challenge me [to a duel] would be to throw himself upon my mercy for he knows I am not bound to meet him [for a duel].” Because Hampton’s behavior marked him as a man who lacked honor, Hammond was no longer bound to meet Hampton in a duel even if Hampton were to demand one. Hammond’s reputation, though tarnished, remained high in the esteem of South Carolinians, and the governor went on to serve as a U.S. senator from 1857 to 1860. As for the four Hampton daughters, they never married; their names were disgraced, not only by the whispered-about scandal but by their father’s actions in response to it; and no man of honor in South Carolina would stoop so low as to marry them.

Gender and the Southern Household

The antebellum South was an especially male-dominated society. Far more than in the North, southern men, particularly wealthy planters, were patriarchs and sovereigns of their own household. Among the White members of the household, labor and daily ritual conformed to rigid gender delineations. Men represented their household in the larger world of politics, business, and war. Within the family, the patriarchal male was the ultimate authority. White women were relegated to the household and lived under the thumb and protection of the male patriarch. The ideal southern lady conformed to her prescribed gender role, a role that was largely domestic and subservient. While responsibilities and experiences varied across different social tiers, women’s subordinate state in relation to the male patriarch remained the same.

Femininity in the South was intimately tied to the domestic sphere, even more so than for women in the North. The cult of domesticity strictly limited the ability of wealthy southern women to engage in public life. While northern women began to organize reform societies, southern women remained bound to the home, where they were instructed to cultivate their families’ religious sensibility and manage their household. Managing the household was not easy work, however. For women on large plantations, managing the household would include directing a large bureaucracy of potentially rebellious enslaved people. For most southern women who did not live on plantations, managing the household included nearly constant work in keeping families clean, fed, and well-behaved. On top of these duties, many southern women were required to help with agricultural tasks.

Figure 2 . This cover illustration from Harper’s Weekly in 1861 shows the ideal of southern womanhood.

Female labor was an important aspect of the southern economy, but the social position of women in southern culture was understood not through economic labor but rather through moral virtue. While men fought to get ahead in the turbulent world of the cotton boom, women were instructed to offer a calming, moralizing influence on husbands and children. The home was to be a place of quiet respite and spiritual solace. Under the guidance of a virtuous woman, the southern home would foster the values required for economic success and cultural refinement. Female virtue came to be understood largely as a euphemism for sexual purity, and southern culture, southern law, and southern violence largely centered on protecting that virtue of sexual purity from any possible imagined threat. In a world saturated with the sexual exploitation of Black women, southerners developed a paranoid obsession with protecting the sexual purity of White women. Black men were presented as an insatiable sexual threat. Racial systems of violence and domination were wielded with crushing intensity for generations, all in the name of keeping White womanhood as pure as the cotton that anchored southern society.

Writers in the antebellum period were fond of celebrating the image of the ideal southern woman. One such writer, Thomas Roderick Dew, president of Virginia’s College of William and Mary in the mid-nineteenth century, wrote approvingly of the virtue of southern women, a virtue he concluded derived from their natural weakness, piety, grace, and modesty. In his  Dissertation on the Characteristic Differences Between the Sexes , he writes that southern women derive their power not by  leading armies to combat, or of enabling her to bring into more formidable action the physical power which nature has conferred on her. No! It is but the better to perfect all those feminine graces, all those fascinating attributes, which render her the center of attraction, and which delight and charm all those who breathe the atmosphere in which she moves; and, in the language of Mr. Burke, would make ten thousand swords leap from their scabbards to avenge the insult that might be offered to her. By her very meekness and beauty does she subdue all around her.

Such popular idealizations of elite southern White women, however, are difficult to reconcile with their lived experience: in their own words, these women frequently described the trauma of childbirth, the loss of children, and the loneliness of the plantation.

Louisa Cheves McCord’s “Woman’s Progress”

Louisa Cheves McCord was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1810. A child of some privilege in the South, she received an excellent education and became a prolific writer. As the excerpt from her poem “Woman’s Progress” indicates, some southern women also contributed to the idealization of southern White womanhood.

Sweet Sister! stoop not thou to be a man! Man has his place as woman hers; and she As made to comfort, minister and help; Moulded for gentler duties, ill fulfils His jarring destinies. Her mission is To labour and to pray; to help, to heal, To soothe, to bear; patient, with smiles, to suffer; And with self-abnegation noble lose Her private interest in the dearer weal Of those she loves and lives for. Call not this— (The all-fulfilling of her destiny; She the world’s soothing mother)—call it not, With scorn and mocking sneer, a drudgery. The ribald tongue profanes Heaven’s holiest things, But holy still they are. The lowliest tasks Are sanctified in nobly acting them. Christ washed the apostles’ feet, not thus cast shame Upon the God-like in him. Woman lives Man’s constant prophet. If her life be true And based upon the instincts of her being, She is a living sermon of that truth Which ever through her gentle actions speaks, That life is given to labour and to love.—Louisa Susanna Cheves McCord, “Woman’s Progress,” 1853

What womanly virtues does Louisa Cheves McCord emphasize? How might her social status, as an educated southern woman of great privilege, influence her understanding of gender relations in the South?

For enslaver Whites, the male-dominated household operated to protect gendered divisions and prevalent gender norms; for enslaved women, however, the same system exposed them to brutality and frequent sexual domination. The demands on the labor of enslaved women made it impossible for them to perform the role of domestic caretaker that was so idealized by southern men. That enslavers put them out into the fields, where they frequently performed work traditionally thought of as male, reflected little the ideal image of gentleness and delicacy reserved for White women. Nor did the enslaved woman’s role as daughter, wife, or mother garner any patriarchal protection. Each of these roles and the relationships they defined was subject to the prerogative of a master, who could freely violate enslaved women’s persons, sell off their children, or separate them from their families.

• US History. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/12-3-wealth-and-culture-in-the-south . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/1-introduction
• Religion and Honor in the Slave South. Provided by : The American Yawp. Located at : http://www.americanyawp.com/text/11-the-cotton-revolution/#footnote_14_84 . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

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A bumpy train ride: a field experiment on insult, honor, and emotional reactions.

The present research examined the relationship between adherence to honor norms and emotional reactions after an insult. Participants were 42 Dutch male train travelers, half of whom were insulted by a confederate who bumped into the participant and made a degrading remark. Compared with insulted participants with a weak adherence to honor norms, insulted participants with a strong adherence to honor norms were (a) more angry, (b) less joyful, (c) less fearful, and (d) less resigned. Moreover, insulted participants with a strong adherence to honor norms perceived more anger in subsequent stimuli than not-insulted participants with a strong adherence to these norms. The present findings support a direct relationship among insult, adherence to honor norms, and emotional reactions.

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The present research examined the relationship between adherence to honor norms and emotional reactions after an insult. Participants were 42 Dutch male train travelers, half of whom were insulted by a confederate who bumped into the participant and made a degrading remark. Compared with insulted participants with a weak adherence to honor norms, insulted participants with a strong adherence to honor norms were (a) more angry,(b) less joyful,(c) less fearful, and (d) less resigned. Moreover, insulted participants with a ...

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The paper presents a survey study that investigates the self-conscious emotion of feeling offended and provides an account of it in terms of a socio-cognitive model of emotions. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the participants' answers, the study provides a definition of offense and of the feeling of offense in terms of its " mental ingredients, " the beliefs and goals represented in a person who feels this emotion, and finds out what are its necessary and aggravating conditions, what are the explicit and implicit causes of offense (the other's actions, omissions, inferred mental states), what negative evaluations are offensive and why. It also shows that the feeling of offense is not only triggered about honor or public image, but it is mainly felt in personal affective relationships. The paper finally highlights that high self-esteem may protect a person against the feeling of offense and the constellation of negative emotions triggered by it.

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Insult or Honor?

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Death, burial, and the afterlife in ancient greece.

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Attributed to the Achilles Painter

Painted limestone funerary stele with a woman in childbirth

Painted limestone funerary stele with a seated man and two standing figures

Terracotta krater

Attributed to the Hirschfeld Workshop

Marble statue of a kouros (youth)

Terracotta pyxis (box)

Attributed to the Penthesilea Painter

Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl

Marble grave stele of a little girl

Marble funerary statues of a maiden and a little girl

Painted limestone funerary slab with a man controlling a rearing horse

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at ease

Marble grave stele with a family group

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier taking a kantharos from his attendant

Attributed to the Tithonos Painter

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier and two girls

Terracotta bell-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water)

Attributed to the Persephone Painter

Marble akroterion of the grave monument of Timotheos and Nikon

Attributed to the Sabouroff Painter

Terracotta funerary plaque

Attributed to the Phiale Painter

Terracotta oinochoe: chous (jug)

Attributed to the Meidias Painter

Department of Greek and Roman Art , The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2003

The ancient Greek conception of the afterlife and the ceremonies associated with burial were already well established by the sixth century B.C. In the Odyssey , Homer describes the Underworld, deep beneath the earth, where Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon , and his wife, Persephone, reigned over countless drifting crowds of shadowy figures—the “shades” of all those who had died. It was not a happy place. Indeed, the ghost of the great hero Achilles told Odysseus that he would rather be a poor serf on earth than lord of all the dead in the Underworld ( Odyssey  11: 489–91).

The Greeks believed that at the moment of death, the psyche, or spirit of the dead, left the body as a little breath or puff of wind. The deceased was then prepared for burial according to the time-honored rituals. Ancient literary sources emphasize the necessity of a proper burial and refer to the omission of burial rites as an insult to human dignity ( Iliad  23: 71). Relatives of the deceased, primarily women, conducted the elaborate burial rituals that were customarily of three parts: the prothesis (laying out of the body ( 54.11.5 ), the ekphora (funeral procession), and the interment of the body or cremated remains of the deceased. After being washed and anointed with oil, the body was dressed ( 75.2.11 ) and placed on a high bed within the house. During the prothesis, relatives and friends came to mourn and pay their respects. Lamentation of the dead is featured in Greek art at least as early as the Geometric period , when vases were decorated with scenes portraying the deceased surrounded by mourners. Following the prothesis, the deceased was brought to the cemetery in a procession, the ekphora, which usually took place just before dawn. Very few objects were actually placed in the grave, but monumental earth mounds, rectangular built tombs, and elaborate marble stelai and statues were often erected to mark the grave and to ensure that the deceased would not be forgotten. Immortality lay in the continued remembrance of the dead by the living. From depictions on white-ground lekythoi, we know that the women of Classical Athens made regular visits to the grave with offerings that included small cakes and libations.

The most lavish funerary monuments were erected in the sixth century B.C. by aristocratic families of Attica in private burial grounds along the roadside on the family estate or near Athens. Relief sculpture, statues ( 32.11.1 ), tall stelai crowned by capitals ( 11.185a-c,f,g ), and finials marked many of these graves. Each funerary monument had an inscribed base with an epitaph, often in verse that memorialized the dead. A relief depicting a generalized image of the deceased sometimes evoked aspects of the person’s life, with the addition of a servant, possessions, dog, etc. On early reliefs, it is easy to identify the dead person; however, during the fourth century B.C., more and more family members were added to the scenes, and often many names were inscribed ( 11.100.2 ), making it difficult to distinguish the deceased from the mourners. Like all ancient marble sculpture, funerary statues and grave stelai were brightly painted , and extensive remains of red, black, blue, and green pigment can still be seen ( 04.17.1 ).

Many of the finest Attic grave monuments stood in a cemetery located in the outer Kerameikos, an area on the northwest edge of Athens just outside the gates of the ancient city wall. The cemetery was in use for centuries—monumental Geometric kraters marked grave mounds of the eighth century B.C. ( 14.130.14 ), and excavations have uncovered a clear layout of tombs from the Classical period, as well. At the end of the fifth century B.C., Athenian families began to bury their dead in simple stone sarcophagi placed in the ground within grave precincts arranged in man-made terraces buttressed by a high retaining wall that faced the cemetery road. Marble monuments belonging to various members of a family were placed along the edge of the terrace rather than over the graves themselves.

Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dbag/hd_dbag.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Garland, Robert. The Greek Way of Death . Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Grant, Michael, and John Hazel. Who's Who in Classical Mythology . London: Dent, 1993.

Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary . 3d ed., rev. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Howatson, M. C., ed. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature . 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Pedley, John Griffiths. Greek Art and Archaeology . 2d ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

Pomeroy, Sarah B., et al. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Robertson, Martin. A History of Greek Art . 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

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Researched Argument: Home

Choose 1 of the 4 essay prompt options below, from previous AP Lang exams.

Read the following excerpt from The Decline of Radicalism (1969) by Daniel J. Boorstin and consider the implications of the distinction Boorstin makes between dissent and disagreement. Then, using appropriate evidence, write a carefully reasoned essay in which you defend, challenge, or qualify Boorstin's distinction.

Dissent is the great problem of America today. It overshadows all others. It is a symptom, an expression, a consequence, and a cause of all others. I say dissent and not disagreement. And it is the distinction between dissent and disagreement which I really want to make. Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension. Dissent (which comes from the Latin, dis and sentire) means originally to feel apart from others. People who disagree have an argument, but people who dissent have a quarrel. People may disagree and both may count themselves in the majority. But a person who dissents is by definition in a minority. A liberal society thrives on disagreement but is killed by dissension. Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.

In many national elections, only a fraction of eligible voters actually casts ballots. For local elections, the voter turnout is often even smaller. To prevent this state of affairs, some countries, such as Australia, make voting compulsory for all adults. In a well-written essay that draws upon your reading, experience, or observations for support, take a position on the issue of compulsory voting.

Contemporary life is marked by controversy. Choose a controversial local, national, or global issue with which you are familiar. Then, using appropriate evidence, write an essay that carefully considers the opposing positions on this controversy and proposes a solution or compromise.

In the introduction to her book Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking, investigative journalist Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) confronts accusations that she is a "muckraker." While the term was used by United States president Theodore Roosevelt in a 1906 speech to insult journalists who had, in his opinion, gone too far in the pursuit of their stories, the term "muckraker" is now more often used to refer to one who "searches out and publicly exposes real or apparent misconduct of a prominent individual or business." With this more current definition in mind, Mitford was ultimately happy to accept the title "Queen of the Muckrakers."

Do you agree with Mitford's view that it is an honor to be called a "muckracker," or do you think that journalists who search out and expose real or apparent misconduct go too far in the pursuit of their stories? Explain your position in a well-written essay that uses specific evidence for support.

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Chicago Bulls

Chicago bulls | barack obama honors michael jordan for ‘transcendent’ career in essay collection for chicago bulls ring of honor.

Former President Barack Obama praised the career of Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan as part of an essay collection honoring the team’s inaugural Ring of Honor inductees.

“There are only a handful of athletes in history — Ruth, Robinson, Ali — that can claim a comparable impact,” Obama wrote. “Michael Jordan shares that rare air. Not bad for a kid from Wilmington, North Carolina, who had once been cut by his high school varsity team.”

Jordan is one of 13 members of the inaugural Ring of Honor class , which is being celebrated in a gala Thursday night at the United Center and at halftime of Friday’s game against the Golden State Warriors.

The Bulls selected a different writer with ties to the franchise and Chicago to honor each of the 13 members of the class, including Hall of Famer Jerry Colangelo writing about Dick Klein; Phil Jackson on Tex Winter; Gregg Popovich on Jerry Sloan; and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on the 1995-96 team, which also will be inducted into the Ring of Honor this week.

A handwritten copy of Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder’s tribute essay to Dennis Rodman will be on display in the United Center atrium for fans to view during Friday’s game.

“At the dawn of each NBA season, the ultimate goal was a world championship,” Vedder wrote. “Going all the way, three for three in those three epic seasons, the Chicago Bulls left no doubt as to their dominance. It was intense. It was joyful. It was inspiring. It was a team the likes of which may never be seen again. And there will certainly never be another comet as bright and impactful as Dennis Rodman. Forever a legend. The city of Chicago is so grateful you landed here.”

All of the essays are viewable on the Bulls website .

Ring of Honor essayists

Jerry Colangelo on Dick Klein

Doug Collins on Chet Walker

Neil Funk on Johnny “Red” Kerr

Pau Gasol on Toni Kukoc

Phil Jackson on Tex Winter

Magic Johnson on Scottie Pippen

Pete Nordstrom on Bob Love

Barack Obama on Michael Jordan

Gregg Popovich on Jerry Sloan

Jerry Reinsdorf on Jerry Krause

Adam Silver on the 1995-96 Bulls

Eddie Vedder on Dennis Rodman

Bill Walton on Artis Gilmore

Michael Wilbon on Phil Jackson

More Ring of Honor stories

Bulls fans boo late GM Jerry Krause during Ring of Honor celebration: ‘That was really classless’

Column: A long-overdue salute by the Bulls to the greatest NBA team of all time

Bulls Ring of Honor celebration a missed opportunity for Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen to settle yearslong feud

Photos: Bulls honor inaugural Ring of Honor class

Bulls greats celebrate the glory years of the franchise with a Ring of Honor gala: ‘I would have hated to have missed this’

Photos: Bulls Ring of Honor gala at the United Center

Photos: Meet the 13 Bulls’ inaugural Ring of Honor class

5 things to remember about the 1995-96 Bulls ahead of their Ring of Honor induction

Who should be selected next for the Bulls’ Ring of Honor? 5 potential choices for the future.

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Jamelle Bouie

This Whole King Trump Thing Is Getting Awfully Literal

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law.

More astonishing than the former president’s claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court took the case in the first place . It’s not just that there’s an obvious response — no, the president is not immune to criminal prosecution for illegal actions committed with the imprimatur of executive power, whether private or “official” (a distinction that does not exist in the Constitution) — but that the court has delayed, perhaps indefinitely, the former president’s reckoning with the criminal legal system of the United States.

In delaying the trial, the Supreme Court may well have denied the public its right to know whether a former president, now vying to be the next president, is guilty of trying to subvert the sacred process of presidential succession: the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to another that is the essence of representative democracy. It is a process so vital, and so precious, that its first occurrence — with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1800 presidential election — was a second sort of American Revolution.

Whether motivated by sincere belief or partisanship or a myopic desire to weigh in on a case involving the former president, the Supreme Court has directly intervened in the 2024 presidential election in a way that deprives the electorate of critical information or gives it less time to grapple with what might happen in a federal courtroom. And if the trial occurs after an election in which Trump wins a second term and he is convicted, then the court will have teed the nation up for an acute constitutional crisis. A president, for the first time in the nation’s history, might try to pardon himself for his own criminal behavior.

In other words, however the Supreme Court rules, it has egregiously abused its power.

It is difficult to overstate the radical contempt for republican government embodied in the former president’s notion that he can break the law without consequence or sanction on the grounds that he must have that right as chief executive. As Trump sees it, the president is sovereign, not the people. In his grotesque vision of executive power, the president is a king, unbound by law, chained only to the limits of his will.

This is nonsense. In a detailed amicus brief submitted in support of the government in Trump v. United States, 15 leading historians of the early American republic show the extent to which the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution rejected the idea of presidential immunity for crimes committed in office.

“Although the framers debated a variety of designs for the executive branch — ranging from a comparatively strong, unitary president to a comparatively weaker executive council — they all approached the issues with a deep-seated, anti-monarchical sentiment,” the brief states. “There is no evidence in the extensive historical record that any of the framers believed a former president should be immune from criminal prosecution. Such a concept would be inimical to the basic intentions, understandings, and experiences of the founding generation.”

The historians gather a bushel of quotes and examples from a who’s who of the revolutionary generation to prove the point. “In America the law is king,” Thomas Paine wrote in his landmark pamphlet, “Common Sense.” “For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

James Madison thought it “indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the Community against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.” The presidency was designed with accountability in mind.

Years later, speaking on the Senate floor, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina — a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia — said outright that he and his colleagues did not intend for the president to have any privileges or immunities: “No privilege of this kind was intended for your Executive, nor any except that which I have mentioned for your Legislature.”

What’s more, as the brief explains, ratification of the Constitution rested on the “express” promise that “the new president would be subject to criminal conviction.”

“His person is not so much protected as that of a member of the House of Representatives,” Tench Coxe wrote in one of the first published essays urging ratification of the Constitution, “for he may be proceeded against like any other man in the ordinary course of law.”

James Iredell, one of the first justices of the Supreme Court, told the North Carolina ratifying convention that if the president “commits any misdemeanor in office, he is impeachable, removable from office, and incapacitated to hold any office of honor, trust or profit.” And if he commits any crime, “he is punishable by the laws of his country, and in capital cases may be deprived of his life.”

Yes, you read that correctly. In his argument for the Constitution, one of the earliest appointees to the Supreme Court specified that in a capital case, the president could be tried, convicted and put to death.

If there were ever a subject on which to defer to the founding generation, it is on this question regarding the nature of the presidency. Is the president above the law? The answer is no. Is the president immune from criminal prosecution? Again, the answer is no. Any other conclusion represents a fundamental challenge to constitutional government.

I wish I had faith that the Supreme Court would rule unanimously against Trump. But having heard the arguments — having listened to Justice Brett Kavanaugh worry that prosecution could hamper the president and having heard Justice Samuel Alito suggest that we would face a destabilizing future of politically motivated prosecutions if Trump were to find himself on the receiving end of the full force of the law — my sense is that the Republican-appointed majority will try to make some distinction between official and unofficial acts and remand the case back to the trial court for further review, delaying a trial even further.

Rather than grapple with the situation at hand — a defeated president worked with his allies to try to overturn the results of an election he lost, eventually summoning a mob to try to subvert the peaceful transfer of power — the Republican-appointed majority worried about hypothetical prosecutions against hypothetical presidents who might try to stay in office against the will of the people if they aren’t placed above the law.

It was a farce befitting the absurdity of the situation. Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king. And at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it.

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Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @ jbouie