Federal officials waging war upon a State are guilty of treason against that State according to the US Constitution.

Foreign observers of the War Between the States like Edward Dicey clearly saw the conflict as between to cultures and countries, brought to arms by the failure of a written Constitution which was admittedly only an experiment in free government. A collection of agreed upon compromises from 1787 had by 1861 fully unraveled; the reluctance of the radical Republican party in the North to reach political compromise with the South led to the war and end of the Founders’ republic. As noted below, only a State legislature may determine if insurrection exists and then allow federal troops within its borders to help quell it; federal officials waging war upon a State are guilty of treason against that State according to the US Constitution.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

A Constitution Found Wanting:

“Throughout almost all English speculations on American affairs, there runs a constant assumption that the United States Government resembles our Old World Governments, and possesses unlimited powers of action, if only it chooses to exert them. Now the truth is that, by the very nature of its Constitution, the powers of the government are so strictly defined that in all cases not provided for by the express letter of the law it has no authorized means of action.

Thus in Europe, the refusal of the Federal Government to recognize formally the fact that the Confederates were belligerents appeared dictated by a childish reluctance to acknowledge and unwelcome truth. In reality, it was constitutionally impossible for the North to admit the belligerent character of the South.

The Federal Government has power by the Constitution to suppress an insurrection in the supposed interest of the insurgent State – it has no power whatsoever to make war upon a State. In order to keep within the Constitution, it was essential for the Federal Government to assume the theory that the insurgent States still form part of the Union. Yet the adoption of this theory involves inconceivable difficulties in practice.

If the States are still within the Union, they must be dealt with by the laws of the Constitution. Thus, to quote one simple instance, the insurgents must be tried in their own State, by a jury taken from the State, and no Southern jury would ever convict an insurgent of treason.

Again, all taxes, by the Constitution, must be uniformly imposed on all the States. It would be therefore impossible, if the war was over, to tax the insurgent States, so as to make them bear the expenses of the war. These are not theoretical difficulties, but practical and pressing ones.

If the broad principle is once admitted that the welfare of the Commonwealth overrides all State interests and justifies any stretch of power, then the [Constitutional] doctrine of State rights is virtually defunct in the North as well as in the South….

Added to all this, the whole nation has been taught, so long and so sedulously, that the Constitution is the great bulwark of their liberties – the grandest triumph of legislative power, that they cannot yet, and dare not yet, realize the truth, that this Constitution has been tried and found wanting.”

(Spectator of America, Edward Dicey, (originally published in 1863, “Six Months in the Federal States,” University of Georgia Press, 1989, pp. 127-128)

A Constitution Found Wanting