The Constitution is more than that.
If you wish, I can make an analogy regarding a marriage contract, a corporate partnership contract, a real estate contract, contracted services or goods contract, another Constitution, etc. etc, .....
You can dredge up any analogy you wish. But the one common feature in all those are that to end it requires legal procedings. The South walked out. So they unilaterally voided the contract, abandonded the marriage, stole the property, repudiated contracted obligations, etc., etc., ....
What did the Constitution say about the Powers not specifically prohibited by the Constitution or prohibited by Federal law?
Nothing. The word 'expressly' or 'specifically' is found nowhere in the Constitution, and nothing in the Constitution says that only those powers explicitly listed are allowed. As the Supreme Court found in McCulloch v. Maryland, "...there is no phrase in the (Constitution) which, like the Articles of Confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described." Chief Justice Marshall goes on, "Even the 10th Amendment, which was framed for the purpose of quieting the excessive jealousies which had been excited, omits the word "expressly," and declares only that the powers "not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people," thus leaving the question whether the particular power which may become the subject of contest has been delegated to the one Government, or prohibited to the other, to depend on a fair construction of the whole instrument." And it is for good reason. In your world the entire U.S. Air Force is an illegal organization because the Constitution specifically allows for the funding of an army and a navy only. And the reason for omitting the restriction is clear, "A Constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves."
The Constitution gives Congress the sole power to admit a state to the Union. To, in effect, create the state in the first place. Once in Congressional approval is required for any change of status - combining, splitting in two, changing borders by a fraction of an inch. It doesn't take a lot to deduce from all this that Congressional approval is needed to leave entirely. So clearly the ability to leave the Union unilaterally is a power prohibited to the states.
Very true. That was something that was not guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment and the matter of property was handled atrociously by both side. The matter was certainly not worth the lives of 600,000 Americans.
Apparently Jeff Davis thought it was.
For a way to do it without killing hundreds of thousands, refer to the 1997 Partition Treaty of the Soviet Fleet between Ukraine and Russia.
If you wish. I'll begin by pointing out that the treaty was negotiated between two sovereign nations. So I suggest that you back up a bit to the meeting in 1991 when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all met and negotiated the separation and the creation of the independent states. Note the difference between the creation of the Ukraine and the creation of the confederacy. In the first case there were discussions between all the impacted parties before independence. In the second case the confederacy they just walked out. In the first case the ownership of federal property was negotiated and agreed to ahead of time. In the second case the confederacy took what they wanted. In the first case all issues that had the potential to cause problems were worked out ahead of time. In the second case the confederacy walked out without discussion. So in the first case the separation was done in a manner to ensure a fair, equitable, and peaceful separation. In the second case the confederacy chose a path guaranteed to cause conflict.
Excellent analysis.
One of the myths of the Ciovil War was that the Confederacy simply wanted "to be let alone."
The cause of the split was the refusal of the federal government to allow the expansion of slavery to the federal territories.
If the Confederacy merely wanted peace and to be let alone, then it would have been agreeing to the permanent exclusion of slavery from the federal territories. In other words, secession was pointless unless the South designed to take federal territories by force.
And they moved to do exactly that before the ink was dry on the Confederate Constitution.
The purpose of secession was always war - the decision to seize illegally by force what could not be seized legally through the ballot box.