In my opinion, Mark Twain is satirizing the pre Civil War tendency of Southerners to be very concerned with their personal honor.
The South had evolved a society where the highest classes saw themselves as similar to the aristocrats of old Europe. They felt that their personal honor was so important that it was not at all uncommon for them to fight duels when they felt they had been insulted. This was part of the society that was responsible for slavery as well.
Twain satirizes this by having Colonel Sherburne be so jealous of his reputation that he shoots Boggs for being disrespectful.
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