If I am to hold to a strict adherence of the words and meanings of the constitution I would have to admit that, for better or worse, the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of constitutional questions. Do you agree?
A landmark decision was rendered by SCOTUS in 1869 with Texas v. White. let me quote from the Texas v. White decision:
"When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States...Considered therefore as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union."
But of course that decision wasn't posted until after the civil war ended. And if you were to say that the constitution is quiet on the topic of secession I would be the first to agree. But its absences doesn't necessarily mean an omission and definitely doesn't indicate an excuse. So we need to seek guidance from those who constructed the document that guides our union.
You claim "First the right of secession had been commonly understood since the ratification of the Constitution but every attempt at secession, north or south, has been quashed by the balance of the states. Sure you can find lofty oratory from the founders on the right of rebellion but only offered in the oratorical or theoretic sense. As a practical matter they all signed onto a perpetual agreement.
Second the Confederacy had warned Lincoln not to resupply Fort Sumter. Any nation would consider the occupation of a foreign fort on their territory especially one located in a vital sea port to be an act of aggression.
But it wasn't a foreign port and the confederacy never achieved the status of a sovereign nation. No other nation on Earth recognized them as anything other than rebel upstarts. Thus, the only "occupying" was done by rebel insurrectionists as an illegal action against the federal government.
If you believe as did most statesmen of the US up until at least the 1830s that the member states of the union were sovereign states and that those states had the right to secede from the union.
We are a system of sovereign states - we just happen to be members of a republic built around the concept of Dual Sovereignty. That concept defines who contains what powers and the power to control admission and expulsion of states is left to Congress - not the individual states. Congress, being the collective representative of the individual states holds the exclusive power to say who comes, who stays, and who goes. This fact invalidates your next three sentences. It is my understanding that states do have the option to secede from the union - just not unilaterally.
The attack on Sumter was simply a stupid act of ego. There was nothing to be gained, other than a poke in the eye, and we have seen exactly what could - and was lost.
Not at all. It was never intended to be. Marbury v. Madison was a power grab by the court. Jefferson disagreed with Marshall's reasoning in this case and I think he has proven prophetic.
‘You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”
Congress, being the collective representative of the individual states holds the exclusive power to say who comes, who stays, and who goes.
To say that this is true is to invalidate the entire premise that secession is possible for an individual or small group of states because the majority of states will always vote against the minority in order to preserve the tax income of the minority.
This is to say the right of secession is purely a fiction. The only reason the majority would agree to permit a state to leave is if that state became a burden to the whole in which case the burdensome state would never agree to sever the ties that support its burdensome populace.
A right that depends on the willingness of others to exercise is not a right.