The centuries between the end of the Middle Ages – roughly the conclusion of the Hundred Years' War – and the American Revolution confronted Southerners with a succession of special and troubling problems. For these were the years during which many of their most cherished values took shape and gained a secure base. Historians have argued about whether the decisive changes originated in the material or ideological realm and whether they were promoted by one or another social group. Did the bourgeoisie “cause” the French Revolution, or, increasingly, was it a “revolution” at all? The debates over the origins of capitalism and individualism show no promise of abating any time soon. What remains beyond debate is that Southerners in general and slaveholders in particular simultaneously embraced and repulsed aspects of the changes that had shaped their own society and worldview but that increasingly threatened their destruction.

The Reformation that spawned Protestant denominations from orthodox to liberal heightened the centrality of individual conscience, the individual's obligation to read and interpret Scripture, and the concept of a priesthood of all believers. It thereby invited a dangerous religious radicalism. Capitalism had brought the acceleration of trade and expansion of markets that gave birth to the slaveholding South and sustained its survival. By the early nineteenth century, capitalism, accelerating the expansion of free labor, transformed much of the labor it “freed” into an exploited and disaffected working class.