I believe the phrase "...and levying war against them" figures in that article, no?
After May 23, 1861, Robert E. Lee was a citizen of Virginia, but no longer a citizen of the United States.
Funny thing, though. He resigned his commission on April 20 and took command of Virginia's state forces three days later. Confederate army troops were already flooding into Virginia, federal arsenals had been seized, and there were plans to move the confederate capital to Richmond before Virginia got around to the formality of actually ratifying its secession on May 23.
Robert E. Lee was a citizen of Virginia, but no longer a citizen of the United States.
The United States saw it differently.
Remember too that in the 19th century, citizenship meant citizenship of a State, and that a person was a "U.S. citizen" only derivatively, because his home State was a part of the Union.
Nonsense. The US Constitution gave the federal government the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. The Naturalization Act of 1790 specifically sets out the regulation for aliens to become citizens of the United States and says nothing about their citizenship being only incidental to their citizenship of a state.
Do you wait until a murderous bastard is inside your front door before you load your gun?
The United States saw it differently.
So what! The La Raza freaks see the southwest as part of Mexico but who cares!
I believe the phrase "...and levying war against them" figures in that article, no?
Yes, it does. Your problem is that Robert E. Lee was not a citizen, but an officer in opposing service and therefore not chargeable with treason.
He resigned his commission on April 20 and took command of Virginia's state forces three days later. Confederate army troops were already flooding into Virginia, federal arsenals had been seized, and there were plans to move the confederate capital to Richmond before Virginia got around to the formality of actually ratifying its secession on May 23.
As I've already posted, some of those political communications and collaborations might be chargeable to Gov. Letcher of Virginia as failure to observe his obligations under the Supremacy Clause and his oath of office to defend the Constitution of the United States. The war preparations of which you speak had been undertaken before Lee offered his sword to the State, and you would have to dissect quite a bit of ant shit to determine whether he had committed, during the interval April 23-May 23, an "overt act" against a United States embroiled in war.
Mind you, Lincoln never recognized the Confederacy in any way, but claimed that it did not exist. Therefore, no foreign invader, no recognized combatant power being involved in any way, how could anyone serving against Lincoln and his faction be said to have committed "treason" under Article III?
Do you see how squirrely this is going to get?
In any case, Lee was available for five years after the war, and Jefferson Davis for many more after that, and USG never, ever, under Johnson or Grant, brought a charge against either man.
If I'd been Lee, I'd have demanded charges be brought and a prosecution mounted.
In 1790, "United States" was a plural construction. And the federal government didn't bulldoze States' citizenship requirements until the Warren Court did it to achieve a political end, viz., the enabling and empowerment of transients and drifters to register and vote Democratic.