None of this was specifically laid out in the Constitution though, so it's always going to be somebody's opinion, and that opinion could always be wrong (though people were ready to kill each other based on those opinions).
Even in The Federalist, the brilliant propaganda papers for ratification of the Constitution (largely written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison), the United States are constantly referred to as “the Confederacy” and “a confederate republic,” as opposed to a single “consolidated” or monolithic state. Members of a “confederacy” are by definition free to withdraw from it.
Maybe our sense of the word "confederacy" has been affected by that 1860s Confederacy. It looks like they used the expression "confederate republic" to mean what we would call a "federal republic." We'd have to go back to look at the usage of the day.
Hamilton and Madison didn't believe the country was a unitary or "consolidated" republic, but they also didn't believe that it was a loose league or alliance of independent states. So whether the states were free to withdraw from the union wasn't absolutely clear.
Hamilton and Madison hoped secession would never happen, but they never denied that it was a right and a practical possibility. They envisioned the people taking arms against the federal government if it exceeded its delegated powers or invaded their rights, and they admitted that this would be justified. Secession, including the resort to arms, was the final remedy against tyranny. (This is the real point of the Second Amendment.)
That is the "right of rebellion" against tyranny. It might have been practiced by the states or by individuals or communities. That right didn't mean that states could withdraw from a constitutional government any time they wanted to for any reason they wanted to.
The Constitution itself is silent on the subject, but since secession was an established right, it didn’t have to be reaffirmed. More telling still, even the bitterest opponents of the Constitution never accused it of denying the right of secession.
Three states ratified the Constitution with the provision that they could later secede if they chose; the other ten states accepted this condition as valid.
In so far as the Anti-Federalist thought the Constitution could become tyrannical, maybe they did think that it would remove some right of secession, or maybe secession wasn't something they were worried about. Those three states may have been asserting their right to revolution against a federal government turned tyrannical or their right to reassume their sovereignty if the union failed. I really can't say. I'd have to do more research on this.
The lesson of all the history is that unilateral secession doesn't work. It turns away from established channels and often leads to war. Even if you want to dissolve your ties with the country, it's best to work within the established framework (so long as it remains constitutional and democratic or republican) and not act as though one has the right to cut all ties just because one feels like it.
“None of this was specifically laid out in the Constitution though, so it’s always going to be somebody’s opinion, and that opinion could always be wrong”
Secessionists might be wrong, but for antisecessionists to be right, the way the Constitution works, it has to be specifically laid out. So we know they’re wrong, and if they want to push the issue we can always go back to the utter lack of legal justification for the veritable coup that toppled the Articles if Confederation.
“The lesson of all the history is that unilateral secession doesn’t work”
Yeah, there never was any such thing as the US. We’re still part if the British empire, working within their established channels, and the last 200-plus years was a fever dream.
By the way, I’ve often wondered whether the revolution was justified, or if unjustified nevertheless worth it, especially considering the Constitution failed (or we failed it, whatever). I do find it funny, though, that people talk like Tories without realizing it, and would die to defend a country the very existence of which it theoretically argues away.