Confederates framed secession as continuing the founders’ revolutionary and constitutional legacy.

Evidence

Indeed, when the South seceded from the Union, white Confederates believed they were the inheritors of the founders’ revolutionary legacy and upholders of the true Constitution. Jefferson Davis gave his second inaugural address as president of the Confederate States of America on George Washington’s birthday, vowing that the Confederacy would “perpetuate the principles of our Revolutionary fathers. The day, the memory, and the purpose seem fitly associated…. We are in arms to renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of Constitutional liberty.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 117

Categorization

• XREF: Crucial to the reader’s core concept: ‘origin stories are infrastructure’ — both sides claimed the same Revolutionary origin, showing that what a nation dates itself from determines who counts as the true inheritor.