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Bull Snipe: "Exactly where in the Constitution is the article that permits states to secede.
That is why it would should have gone to the Supreme Court."

Founders Original Intent.
On this I follow Lincoln, who followed Madison, who expressed most clearly Founders' Original Intent:

"Applying a like view of the subject to the case of the U. S. it results, that the compact being among individuals as imbodied into States, no State can at pleasure release itself therefrom, and set up for itself.
The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the other parties, or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect.
It will hardly be contended that there is anything in the terms or nature of the compact, authorizing a party to dissolve it at pleasure."

Summarizing, Founders understood two acceptable conditions for disunion:

Mutual consent, reasonably translated as approval by Congress. That's what Lincoln believed.
Material breech of compact, such as "usurpations" or "abuses" having the same effect.
Reasonably, this could be established by Supreme Court ruling.

But neither condition existed in December 1860 when South Carolina first declared its secession.
That means it, in effect, declared secession "at pleasure", which Madison says is not legitimate.

I am no expert, but it seems reasonable to assume that the several States who have agreed to be “United States”, if one or more decides they no longer want to be “united”, that ALL states would then dissolve the *current* union. After which, several different states could *reunite* and form a NEW United States. Theoretically, instead of civil war, the United States could have effectively split into 2 or more “countries”, or the states could have remained separate.