“A fraction of the people in the United States decided that they were going to strip the United States of a large proportion of its territory. They decided to do so without the consent of the sovereign people of the United States as a whole.”
No, some of the states which voluntarily entered the union decided to voluntarily leave that union, and took with them their territory, which they had brought into the union with them.
It seems to me you must have some backwards conception of rights, as if you think they flow downwards, from the federal government, to the states, and then to the people. It’s the other way around. The states only hold territory because the people who occupy that territory consent to be governed by the state. The union only holds territory because the states who govern that territory consent to enter into the union. That consent, just like the fundamental rights it is enmeshed with, flows upwards from the people, and not downwards from the federal government.
So it’s impossible for the people of one state to have any say in matters of consent for the people of another state. Just as they cannot be forced to enter into the union, they cannot be kept in the union by force, or the union ceases to be a union, and transforms into another political entity entirely, which is what happened, unfortunately.
Sorry. The power already did flow from the bottom up. Our independence was won by the whole united body of the people, and the Constitution was ratified by We the People of the United States, which formed one nation, one unified constitutional free republic, under God.
You don’t get to arbitrarily destroy that whenever you want. Especially for wicked, selfish, tyrannical reasons.