“thus the citizens were deprived of the protection of the Constitution.”
It’s a circular argument. Under your way of thinking, the constitution did not protect the states’ rights to secede from the Union, therefore the the states had a right to abandon the constitution. If a state wanted to defy the constitution and restrict freedom of speech the federal government had no power to stop them since ultimately the state could simply leave the union. In effect, under your interpretation the constitution wasn’t worth the paper it was written on since it was completely unenforceable. The Bill of Rights in the constitution specifies what inalienable rights government (State and Federal) can’t infringe upon. It stands to reason that the States which seceded removed that protection from their citizens when they seceded from the Union, therefore violating all the bill of rights.
The same people who wrote the Constitution seceded their states from England. If they wanted to force the states to a perpetual union, they would have spelled it out as an enumerated power in the Constitution, but they did not. If it is not enumerated in the Constitution it is then left to the individual states and the people. You assume that you know my way of thinking and stated “ the constitution did not protect the states’ rights to secede from the Union, therefore the the states had a right to abandon the constitution”. The word secession is not in the Constitution, how could it protect a right that it does not even address? If it is not enumerated in the Constitution, what do you do? Look to Amendments 9 and 10 for those answers. Freedom of speech is enumerated in the Constitution and is very much enforceable as are any enumerated powers in the Constitution. You think the people of a state are going to ask their representatives to secede from the Union because they no longer want freedom of speech? Hardly, but you should see that they could demand secession if the Federal government attempts to usurp the Constitution and seize powers that are not granted to it by that Constitution. It is that power grab that makes the Constitution unenforceable, not the legal enforcement of the powers granted to the Federal government by the Constitution.