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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