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You're right, I was confusing Story's text with Rawle's 'A View of the Constitution of the United States'. Rawle was published a bit before Story, 1825 vs 1833, and Rawle explicitly defends the right of states to secede:

"It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed."

And while there is no hard record of what particular texts were taught at West Point, Charles Francis Adams wrote that Rawle's view was taught at West Point right up to 1840.

Charles Francis Adams' view on the subject is well worth considering. Adams was about as Yankee as you can get, the great grandson of John Adams and a Union General to boot. He made a speech in 1902 'The Constitutional Ethics of Secession' where he examines the very subject we debate:

"When the Federal Constitution was framed and adopted, — an indissoluble Union of indestructible States, — what was the law of treason; to what or to whom, in case of final issue, did the average citizen owe allegiance? Was it to the Union or to his State? As a practical question, seeing things as they then were, — sweeping aside all incontrovertible legal arguments and metaphysical disquisitions, — I do not think the answer admits of doubt. If put in 1788, or indeed at any time anterior to 1825, the immediate reply of nine men out of ten in the Northern States, and of ninety-nine out of a hundred in the Southern States, would have been that, as between the Union and the State, ultimate allegiance was due to the State."

The whole speech can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/3e5a9re

Exactly. Rawle's book was taught at West Point from its release in 1825 until 1840. The quote from C.F. Adams' Constitutional Ethics of Secession:

It is however a noticeable fact that anterior to 1840 the doctrine of the right of secession seems to have been inculcated at West Point as an admitted principle of Constitutional Law.

As "inculcation" doesn't happen in "one year or at two most" (more likely the '15 years or at most 16' between '25 and '40), x's "maybe, maybe not" and "brief" theories, backed by "most serious scholars" can be safely dismissed.

Amusingly, although Adams, Story and Rawle were all rabid Federalists and personally against secession (putting them in the 99th percentile since no one WANTED secession except as a last resort), Rawle (Pennsylvanian lawyer, and president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society - not exactly a friend of the South) didn't let that interfere with his legal analysis. The next part after your quote:

The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state. The people alone, as we have already seen, hold the power to alter their constitutions. But in any manner by which a secession is to take place, nothing is more certain than that the act should be deliberate, clear, and unequivocal. To withdraw from the Union is a solemn, serious act. Whenever it may appear expedient to the people of a state, it must be manifested in a direct and unequivocal manner.

Story's Commentaries ultimately flipped Rawle's "admitted principle of Constitutional law" on it's head, without an amendment, court decision, or other act to justify the change. Of course it had the convenience of being released after the passing of the founders' generation and before the debates on the Constitution had been made public, so the resources we have now to refute this fallacy weren't readily available.

Unfortunately, many will still argue the legality of the issue as if it were something set in stone, so Lincoln's heinous acts were all legally vindicated. Fortunately, x wasn't around to decide which "b*st*rds" should be hung. The war and Reconstruction were horrible enough.

Charles Francis Adams's claims were investigated and largely refuted in his own lifetime by Colonel Edgar Dudley. You can find Dudley's article here. So far as I know, in the century since Dudley wrote, no one has disproved his findings.

Since Adams backs you up on this, he's trustworthy and admirable. If he disagreed with you about secession, you'd attack him as a typical elitist and racist Boston Brahmin (which he largely was, not a "Yankee" by the way -- at least not the way we use the word up heah).