If a section of the people of a stale rebel against the government, the resulting contest is not a war, in the sense of international law. But as it may assume the physical character of a war, so it may call into existence the rights and customs incident to war. Upon this principle the federal government acquired the rights of war in the contest of 1861-1865.[78] Now the rights of war do not end with military operations; one of these rights is the right of the victorious party, after an unconditional surrender, to occupy the territory of the defeated party, to govern or punish the people as it sees fit. If the United States government acquired the rights of war, this right was included. The close of a war is not simultaneous with the cessation of fighting. The surrender of the southern armies was an important incident in the civil war; it was not the end. If the federal government had the rights of war before this incident, it had them after. The United States government might therefore say to the persons composing the military power which it had subdued: As the terms of war, you are to be governed by military government. If the persons against whom this sentence is assumed to have been pronounced formed the majority of the population of a state, one result of the sentence would be to suspend independent state government. The United States government might choose another punishment. It might say to the lately hostile persons: We forbid you to participate in the federal government. If the persons so sentenced form the majority of the population of a state, that state can send no representatives to Congress while the sentence remains. These sentences might be imposed permanently or only until such time as the people sentenced should fulfil certain demands--hold certain conventions, pass certain laws, adopt certain resolutions in certain ways. The federal government can thus effect through its war powers what it cannot effect through any power to interfere directly with a state government. It had no right to reconstruct the government of Maine in 1865, because Maine had no body of people over whom the federal government could exercise war powers. It had the right to reconstruct the government of Georgia, because nine-tenths of the people of Georgia were lawfully at its mercy as a conqueror.