[tpaine]

But in the end it pretty much comes down to this: If you want to claim that the States had not seceded, and were still citizens of the US, then their Constitutional rights are guaranteed.

Your state government has no power to force an individual to renounce US citizenship.

All persons/civilians in the seceding States remained citizens of the US unless they personally renounced citizenship or aided the rebellion.
By seceding & making war, those in actual rebellion had forfeited their rights to be treated as citizens. As belligerents, their rights to life, liberty or property could be lost.

It seems we have a Tory in our midst.

Bizarre use of 'Tory'. -- I support our Constituttion as written, you claim States can ignore it.

At that time a person possessed American citizenship by virtue of state citizenship.

Absolute bull. Quite a few of our US Citizens in those days lived in 'territories', areas that were not yet States. Territories were administered by the federal government and citizens rights under both jurisdictions were equal.

If a person chose to remain a citizen of the US, all they had to do was move to a state remaining in the union. No one forced them to stay.

Are you claiming that a seceding State could ~force~ a citizen to sell out & leave because he refused to actively support the Confederacy?

Secession did not mean war - is simply meant that the people of that state chose to exercise their powers as described under the Declaration of Independence, and guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment of the federal Constitution. The seceded states did not send armies to Washington to depose Lincoln and overthrow the federal government. As belligerents, their rights are still God-given -

All of us hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
-- Yet 'states rightists' want a State to have the power to ignore those rights for some of the men that reside within its borders.. Men that do not agree with the majority politically.

Lincoln waging war against the seceding states was a war against the Declaration.

Whatever. I can't argue against irrational calls to 'save liberty' by ignoring the Constitutional rights of individuals within a State.

[4CJ]

Your state government has no power to force an individual to renounce US citizenship.

Why? A state ratifying the Constitution can FORCE federal citizen on parties not desirous of such. Again, citizens derived status by virtue of state/territorial citizenship. It's ludicrous to assert that a person can possess federal citizenship without residing in a state/territory. But yet again, even the Supreme Court acknowledged the fact:

Hence, in organizing this rebellion, they have acted as States claiming to be sovereign over all persons and property within their respective limits, and asserting a right to absolve their citizens from their allegiance to the Federal Government. Several of these States have combined to form a new confederacy, claiming to be acknowledged by the world as a sovereign State. Their right to do so is now being decided by wager of battle.
Justice Grier, The Prize Cases, 2 Black 67 (1863)

Note that it's not illegal, it took force of arms to determine the issue.