Southerners Saw Their Political Circumstances As Being Parallel to Those of the Founding Fathers: Both Were Dissolving Lockean Compacts (The British Empire and the USA) Justified by the Lockean Right of Revolution

John Locke had been dead a long time in 1861. Southern secessionists, however, resurrected him and the American revolutionaries of 1776, for whom he was the essential political patriarch. Southerners perceived their political circumstances as being parallel to those of the Founding Fathers: both sets of revolutionaries believed that they were dissolving Lockean compacts—the British Empire and the United States of America. For a time, the secessionists argued, these compacts had served the best interests of the contracting parties. Then, just as George III and his Parliament threatened the well being of the American colonies, so Abraham Lincoln and his Republican Congress threatened the essentials of the Southern way of life. Similar problems called forth similar solutions—secession and independence—justified by the Lockean theory of the right of revolution.

--Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865 (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins e-books, 2010), e-book.