According to Drew Gilpin Faust, the central theme of Confederate nationalism was drawn from a 1776 revival of the American revolutionary spirit, which secessionist agitators denounced the North had steadily abandoned since the birth of the nation . The old guard of Southern conservatives had repeatedly compromised on slavery in a valiant effort to maintain the nation's unity for more than half a century to no avail. The newly elected abolitionist-minded Republicans, led by Abraham Lincoln, would no longer be satisfied simply with the abolition of slavery in America, which would obviously completely destroy the economic base of the South. They would now demand that Negroes be granted equality in the public sphere and private, which was in their eyes an abomination of the law of God. As in the Revolution, it would be left to Southerners to defend the property rights and sacred liberty of honorable Christian society against a tyrannical government and so , evoking the spirit of George Washington, proclaimed that this was not a rebellion, but rather a continuation of the betrayed revolution of their ancestors. So they set out to create this new paradise world of Southern virtue, where God's chosen people would benignly exercise their paternalistic power over the helpless but contented masses. The Confederate Constitution would be free of the compromises that had plagued the nation's founders and would embrace today's racially and class-divided Southern society, firmly based on Christian values ​​and charity. In short, the wealthy ruling minority of the South wanted a change in government without any of the troublesome social changes of the Jacksonian era. This is the South that elites sought to project as a uniform image of Dixie and that was popularized in public memory. Although this grand design may have resonated well with the intoxicants