Short answers, pulled from the story.
Great Britain granted belligerent status to the Confederate States of America on the 13th of May 1861. This legal maneuver treated the civil war as an international conflict without recognizing the Confederacy as a sovereign state.
James Fearon and David Laitin define insurgency as a technology of military conflict characterized by small, lightly armed bands practicing guerrilla warfare from rural base areas. These forces mingle with civilians to hide from the forces defending the political order.
Stuart Eizenstat argues that a state must close three specific gaps to prevent insurgencies: security, capacity, and legitimacy. Security involves protection against threats, capacity covers survival needs like water and food, and legitimacy requires consent of the governed with minimal corruption.
An insurgency aims for political control and may incorporate terrorist tactics as part of a broader strategy to open a security gap. Terrorism may pursue political goals but replaces a political program with violence, whereas an insurgency seeks to exercise power through various practices including dispute resolution and taxation.
Robert R. Tomes identifies four elements that typically encompass an insurgency: cell-networks that maintain secrecy, terrorism used to foster insecurity, multifaceted attempts to cultivate support in the general population, and attacks against the government.
Berman and Matanock propose an information-centric framework where civilians can anonymously share local information with government forces to target rebels. This framework assumes civilians respond to incentives and that security and service provision are complementary activities to influence their decision about sharing information.