For both the United States and the Confederacy, motivation’s essence was a patriotic commitment to defend the liberty bequeathed to Americans by the nation’s founding generation. Exactly what defending liberty meant, however, depended upon sectional understandings of the critical elements of a good society and a just government. One thing was clear to Northerners: there could be no liberty outside of the protection of the old Constitution and the union it had created. Patriots living in the fledgling Confederacy, however, defended secession as a conservative necessity in the face of Northern ideological innovation that challenged their very way of life.