“Can’t quote a source off the top of my head, but I remember reading a long time ago that secession, per se, is allowed, but, just as the states formed a union by common consent, dissolving the union requires common consent. Had the south taken the route of a legal separation, we might have two nations today; however, they chose armed revolt with tragic consequences.”
The Articles of Confederation did not permit secession without unanimous consent. The Constitution did not have such a requirement. The ironic thing is that the states that signed on to the Constitution were effectively seceding illegally from the Confederation.
No, they didn't.
NINE States, and nine States only, formed the United States of America by, individually and solipsistically, on each State's People's own final-and-unappealable sovereign authority, ratified the Constitution one by one by one.
Nobody oversaw, overruled, guided, or had anything to say whatsoever about each sovereign act of ratification. There was ZERO group, reciprocal, or mutual participation in any ratification act -- each State acted 100% independently of all the others.
That is the first thing that needs to be understood. The mechanism for ratification was very precisian and exact, and for damn good reasons that were argued out in the Philadelphia convention by the Framers.
He-gets-it-exactamundo bump.
Most people have no idea -- although Madison I think it was discussed that, ehrrrrmmmm, "candid" little bit of business in one of the latter numbers of The Federalist Papers.
I'm pretty sure that that bit of knowledge has been actively suppressed by the educracy, precisely because of its implications for the argument over secession and its legality.