That's because you are still a Democrat at heart, and Democrats just can't listen to reason that doesn't confirm their pervious opinions.
DiogenesLamp: "The Declaration of Independence makes it very clear that the sole deciders of whether or not a people should have independence, is the people themselves."
Not at all -- the Declaration is all about "necessity" created by British abuse & oppressions, a "parade of horribles" which it lists in detail.
It begins with the very words, "When... it becomes necessary..." and even notes that "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes...".
Those are our Founders' honest beliefs, which you dismiss as irrelevant.
They went on to say:
- "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism..."
So when such intolerable conditions exist, then:
- "...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
However, in 1788, it was 100% "at pleasure" in "seceding" from the old Articles to the new Constitution and that's why it was done by mutual consent.
Bottom line: our Founders practiced revolution from necessity and they made "at pleasure" changes by mutual consent.
In 1861 there was neither "necessity" nor "mutual consent" and so our Founders would not have supported such secession "at pleasure".