Presenting many slaveholders as intelligent, honorable and pious men and women, this study asks how people who were admirable in so many ways could have presided over a social system that inflicted gross abuse on slaves. The South had formidable proslavery intellectuals who participated fully in transatlantic debates and boldly challenged an ascendant capitalist ("free-labor") society. Blending classical and Christian traditions, they forged a moral and political philosophy designed to sustain conservative principles in history, political economy, social theory, and theology, while translating them into political action.

Part I. Cradled in the Storms of Revolution: 1. 'That Terrible Tragedy'; 2. The age of revolution through slaveholding eyes; 3. 'The Purest Sons of Freedom'; Entr'Acte: the bonds of slavery; Part II. The Inescapable Past: 4. History as moral and political instruction; 5. The slaveholders' quest for a history of the common people; 6. World history and the politics of slavery; 7. History as the story of freedom; Part III. Ancient Legacies, Medieval Sensibility, Modern Men: 8. In the shadow of antiquity; 9. Coming to terms with the Middle Ages; 10. The chivalry; 11. Chivalric slave masters; 12. Chivalric politics: Southern ladies take their stand; Part IV. A Christian People Defend the Faith: 13. A Christian people; 14. Unity and diversity among the faithful; 15. War over the Good Book; 16. Slavery: proceeding from the Lord; 17. The Holy Spirit in the word of God; 18. Jerusalem and Athens - against Paris; 19. Serpent in the garden: liberal theology in the South; 20. Theopolitics: golden rule, higher law, and slavery; Coda: St. John of Pottawatamie; Part V. At the Rubicon: 21. Between individualism and corporatism: from the reformation to the war for Southern Independence; 22. Past and future Caesars; Epilogue: King Solomon's dilemma.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese is Eléonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University, where she was founding director of Women's Studies. She is Editor of The Journal of The Historical Society and serves on the Governing Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities (2002-2008). In 2003 President George Bush honored her with a National Humanities Medal, and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars honored her with its Cardinal Wright Award. Among her books and published lectures are: The Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century France; Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South; and Feminism without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism.