As a matter of fact, they did, and Madison in particular, in The Federalist, describes the process in No.43:
Two questions of a very delicate nature present themselves on this occasion: 1. On what principle the Confederation, which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it? 2. What relation is to subsist between the nine or more States ratifying the Constitution, and the remaining few who do not become parties to it?
The first question is answered at once by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed. Perhaps, also, an answer may be found without searching beyond the principles of the compact itself. It has been heretofore noted among the defects of the Confederation, that in many of the States it had received no higher sanction than a mere legislative ratification. The principle of reciprocality seems to require that its obligation on the other States should be reduced to the same standard. A compact between independent sovereigns, founded on ordinary acts of legislative authority, can pretend to no higher validity than a league or treaty between the parties. It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties, that all the articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and that a breach, committed by either of the parties, absolves the others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the compact violated and void. Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for dispensing with the consent of particular States to a dissolution of the federal pact, will not the complaining parties find it a difficult task to answer the multiplied and important infractions with which they may be confronted? The time has been when it was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas which this paragraph exhibits. The scene is now changed, and with it the part which the same motives dictate. [Emphases in original.]
See also the additional discussion here, courtesy of FReeper rustbucket:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Timothy/baldwin124.htm
Money quote is here:
If the states in fact waived all rights to secede from the union under the Articles of Confederation, then the US Constitution is illegitimate and illegal, as not having a basis in the compact among the states to dissolve the previous compact. If the states entered into the Articles of Confederation with the expressed or implied understanding that their union would be perpetual unless all of the states consented otherwise, then nine out of thirteen states’ seceding from that union to join a new union would be just cause for a war, as Lincoln claims he was justified to force union upon the dissenting states. Alternatively, if the right to secede was waived by the “perpetual” duration and a unanimous amendment requirement, it most certainly was reclaimed and reinstituted by the US Constitution’s duration not being stated as “perpetual,” by the secession from the Articles of Confederation, and by the reservation of rights under the tenth amendment.
Madison was not speaking of secession at all but of a pact which fell apart and was incapable of performing its intended function. States paid little attention to the laws Congress passed and violated or ignored them at will with impunity. What we had was “ ...a system of imbecility...” not a government. It had died.
Nor had the United States voided the “pact” in 1860 by electing Lincoln. It was a perfectly constitutional act which happened because the Democrat Party split into factions each of which ran its own candidate. Once again demonstrating the colossal stupidity of the Slaverocracy.
Your “money quote” is worth less than Confederate money in 1866. The Union subsisted throughout the process of amending the Articles as established by the authority, Congress. And the Articles were amended with North Carolina and Rhode Island coming into the new government leisurely and with no doubt that they eventually would when the peculiar circumstances preventing ratification in each were overcome by reason.
None of this has nothing to do with the RAT Rebellion and its attacks on the United States.