A Sacred Circle has been widely acclaimed as the first full treatment of the existence of a Southern reform impulse that offers a new explanation of the proslavery argument. The book demonstrates the widespread similarities between the cultural tensions that plagued North and South and documents the existence of critical thinking in a region too often considered monolithic.

The ambivalent feelings of this group of men for their region, their need both to justify and to return, embody the dilemma not just of Southerners from Jefferson to Quentin Compson and C. Van Woodward but of the intellectual throughout history.