In the months before the April 12, 1861, firing on Fort Sumter, there were lots of sharp divisions in the North about the proper reaction to the first seven Confederate states that had already left the Union.

Not all Unionists believed that war was inevitable. Similarly, others agreed that the emerging Confederacy was not worth the trouble and costs of war, and the secessionists could just form their own nation and stew in their own backward, servile juice.

But after Fort Sumter, Lincoln – who was hated as much by the Confederates as Trump is by the woke and socialist left – gained a consensus that the Constitution had no clauses about any lawful departure from the union. But it did operate under a clear supremacy clause that made state obstruction of federal law and occupation of federal property veritable sedition.

Something similar is emerging over Minnesota, the South Carolina of our age.

Once sanctuary states, cities, and counties had established the precedent that, with impunity, they could nullify federal immigration law, then what followed was a logical and mounting descent into the current open defiance of the federal government.

The reaction of the rest of the nation, especially its conservative half, to Minnesota resembles the 1861 disconnect in the North over the insurrectionary states.

Some believe that if Minnesota wants to protect its approximately 1,300 jailed illegal alien murderers, rapists, and assorted felons, so be it, and ICE should leave such a dysfunctional and dystopian state to its own self-destructive path.

Trump should stick to the red and purple states, clear them of criminal aliens with the help of local enforcement, but without the organized performance-art leftist resistance. Then he could contrast the nation with the difference between low crime, noncontroversial deportations, versus the blue-state model of protecting illegal alien criminals and their indifference to the mayhem they inflict on the innocent.

If Minnesota further wants to be a state like 1861 South Carolina that openly defies the federal government, then also so be it. But it should accordingly not expect federal funding for its pick-and-choose approach to federal law and property.

Has Minnesota forgotten that, like blue-state America, it cheered on Barack Obama’s DOJ when it successfully sued Arizona in 2010, insisting that it was Obama’s right as a federal custodian not to enforce federal immigration law at the border – and thus not legal for Governor Jan Brewer to use her state resources to enforce a federal law that derelict federal officers would not?

Millions in Minnesota properly see themselves as Americans first and Minnesotans second. In this line of argument, just as Lincoln refused to give up federal armories, property, and offices inside the South – most notably Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor – to insurrectionists, so too the Trump administration has an obligation to protect federal property and offices in Minnesota and to enforce federal law throughout the nation, at least if it is to continue as a nation.

Very soon, Trump will have to decide which strategy is preferable and politically viable before the midterms.

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s highest elected officials have ordered local and state police not to protect federal immigration officers from the very street violence that they fuel. Indeed. Governor Walz, Mayor Frey, and Attorney General Ellison are actively encouraging Minnesotans to obstruct federal officers from enforcing federal laws – despite the mounting violence that follows their collective prompts.

Walz and company further quietly accept that they could easily mitigate the violence by simply turning over roughly 1,300 criminal illegal aliens in various Minnesota jails to federal authorities. To do so would lessen the chances of violence, make Minnesota a safer place, and expedite the rotation of ICE out of Minnesota.