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The error of opinion is in WANTING to disolve the union - not in whether it is possible to do so!

I conceed that I may have implied that Jefferson was in favour - that is incorrect (pardon my wording on that!).

NONE of the founders favoured secession - but they DID adress those who did!

I mainly used this reference to show that after 10 years - there was already talk of leaving, disolving, etc ... this continued right up to the civil war.

IMHO this issue, like so many others today really boils down to whether the consitution - as originally written, i.e. without the Bor etc - was a confederation of sovereign states for a common cause or the creation of a central absolute sovereign of subject states.

In todays world, it is obviously the later. I contend it was originally the former - but I conceed that opinions on this differ - sometimes extremely! :D

Yes, the talk of secesion was around at their time. Just witness the Hartford compact for proof. However, none of the founders ever thought that it was legitimate (through our constitution) or desirable to do so. Since they are the ones that formed this Union, you would have to agree that they wrote it with the intention that you could not simply secede or opt out of the union. And as Jefferson said:

"On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."

If I may paraphrase Jefferson, if we didn't write the constitution with this intent, don't try to invent a power of secession reserved for the states.

I wholeheartedly agree that the Federal government of today has far too much power and the creep towards consolidation of power at the federal level and away from the states can be traced back to the Civil War and accelerated exponentially under Wilson. However, I blame the beginning creep on the South disobeying the Constitution and (writing into it) the opt out clause in the first place. Lets remember, Lincoln and the leading Republicans of that era were trying to abolish slavery through political and non violent methods.