A theory as to why the American South had or may have had this culture is an assumed regional belief in retribution to enforce one's rights and deter predation against one's family, home, and possessions.
[1] The "culture of honor" in the Southern United States is hypothesized by some social scientists[1] to have its roots in the livelihoods of the settlers who first inhabited the region.
[3] Critics argue that poverty or religion, which has been distinctive in the American South since the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century, might be the more relevant historical key drivers of this cultural phenomenon.
[12] The historian David Hackett Fischer, a professor of history at Brandeis University, makes a case for an enduring genetic basis for a "willingness to resort to violence" (citing especially the finding of high blood levels of testosterone as discussed above) in the four main chapters of his book Albion's Seed.
He proposes that this propensity has been transferred to other ethnic groups by shared culture, whence it can be traced to different urban populations of the United States.
Barring under-reported crime against some groups, low homicide may simply have been gentlemanly self-restraint at a time when social order was stable, a trend that reverses in the 19th century and later.