REBELLION (Lat. rebellio, from rchellis, making war again, from re-, back again, anew --I belluin, war). In its narrowest sense, open re sistance to authority. In its public-law significa tion rebellion is the armed opposition to the government of a portion of its subjects for the purpose of securing a change in the constitution or laws, or with a view to preventing the execu tion of the laws. Unless the authority against which the resistance is directed be lawful there is no rebellion. Thus, resistance to an officer who is acting beyond his legal powers is not an act of Rebellion is sometimes said to differ from insurrection in that it is a more general and more perfectly organized resistance than insurrection, and usually undertaken with a view to subverting the government, that is, the difference chiefly is one of degree. This is the view taken by the United States Supreme Court (Prize Cases, 2 Black). Other authorities hold the reverse to be true. According to the latter view a rebel is one who openly refuses to obey the authority of the State. while an insurgent goes further and attacks the government with the intent of overthrowing it or replacing it by another. According to the public-law view civil war is a between two parties occupying substantially same geographical limits for the possession of the government, each claiming to he the legitimate party. Rebellion, on the other hand, in its advanced stage (or insurrec tion, according to the second view propounded above), is the attempt of a section of the people to overthrow the government or its authority with a view to replacing it by another of a different type, or for the purpose of constituting a separate nation with a separate sovereignty.
Finally, there is the distinction between rebellion and revolution, which may be summed up as the difference between failure and success.
Every person who engages in rebellion is liable to the criminal penalties for treason established by tlie government against which lie rebels and he is dealt with by the ordinary civil authorities, but when the rebellion becomes so widespread as to embrace a vast majority of the inhabitants of a considerable portion of the country, and when the rebels have succeeded in establishing a government and raising an army or navy, and especially if they have won recognition as hel ligerents from foreign nations with the rigInts incident thereto, those who are captured are usually treated as belligerents in conformity with the rules of civilized warfare. While endeavoring to enforce its constitutional rights against armed rebellion, a nation has all the powers, not only of a sovereign, but also of the most favored belligerent. The Constitution of the United States authorizes Congress to provide for calling out the militia to suppress insurrec tions. and Congress has done so by empowering the President to call upon the militia whenever in his judgment danger from rebellion requires; that step. The Supreme Court has decided that the President is the sole judge as to when the exigency shall have arisen. In pursuance of this authority the President has called out the militia three times in our history—namely, in 1794, to suppress the Whisky Rebellion in Pennsylvania; in 1812. to repel the British invasion; and in 1861, to suppress the insurrection in the South ern States.