[You]: Actually, no they didn't. They did it the way they figured they could do it and defied the union to stop them.
The Southern states generally elected representatives to secession conventions much as states did in ratifying the US Constitution. Several of the Southern states went further than that in submitting the question of secession directly to the voters of their states. That was only done by one state in the ratification of the US Constitution. In that instance ratification of the Constitution failed by a ten to one margin. The Constitution was later ratified in that state by a small convention.
Where in the Constitution was the Federal government, or for that matter, non-seceding states given the power to stop a state from withdrawing from the Union?
Apparently you know better what the Constitution means than those two ratifiers of the Constitution and authors of the Federalist Papers I cited above. How wonderful that we have you to explain it to us.
No, I don't profess to know the Constitution better than Hamilton or Jay - or even you for that matter. But in my attempt to better understand their view of secession I went out to the Internet in search of evidence to support your POV. I must confess that I didn't do very well.
Even dilorenzo only manages a weak opinion - and has to take Hamilton out of context to do it. Most who have written on it remark that Hamilton, a Federalist, recognized the inherent right of rebellion when subjected to tyranny (a condition that never existed in 1860 America) and otherwise opposed unilateral secession.
In truth Hamilton opposed secession. He opposed it in 1788, he opposed it during the Constitutional Convention, and he opposed it in 1804.
At the risk of alienating swing voters and losing on the ultimate ratification vote, Federalists emphatically opposed the compromise. In doing so, they made clear to everyone -- in New York and in the 12 other states where people were following the New York contest with interest -- that the Constitution did not permit unilateral state secession. Alexander Hamilton read aloud a letter at the Poughkeepsie convention that he had received from James Madison stating that "the Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever." Hamilton and John Jay then added their own words, which the New York press promptly reprinted: "a reservation of a right to withdraw" was "inconsistent with the Constitution, and was no ratification.".
http://www.law.yale.edu/news/1850.htm
Hamilton's ideological foe was Jefferson and Hamilton's opposition to secession even figured into Hamilton's death in his duel with Aaron Burr.
Everything I find conforms to an understanding by Hamilton that the Union was perpetual and that, absent tyranny was inviolate. I do not see where your views and Hamilton's cross paths for more than an instant.