Article III: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3: No person ... shall ... hold any [state or federal] office, ... who, having previously taken an oath, as [a state or federal officer]i ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. Supreme Court Judge Robbins Curtis explained the rule of Hoxie as follows: While members of a mob simply bent on preventing the arrest of a friend would not be guilty of treason, they would be insurrectionists if their design was “to prevent any person from being arrested under that law.” Thus, had Hoxie organized persons to repossess any boat in the area impounded by federal officials under the Embargo Act, he would have been a traitor as well as a murderer.
“Influential persons,” Curtis informed a grand jury, “cannot ... excite the passions of the ignorant and unreflecting, ... incite them to action, supply them with weapons, and then retire and wait in safety the result of the violence.”
Curtis declared, “Those who have the wickedness to plan and incite and aid ... are justly deemed guilty of this offence, though they are not present at the immediate scene of violence.”