[smug]

the government was formed under Constitution with respect to those states that ratified it

Very true, it only took nine states to form a union of states under the Constitution with or without the other four states. And those states would have come out of the union under the "Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union". Now how perpetual was that; I dare say no more perpetual than the Constitution, for as each state, by vote of it's citizens came in so by the same it could go out. A country as ours was conceived, under the right to self government, to have forbid a state in the Constitution from that same right would have never saw a single state let alone nine confirm it.

[Non-Sequitur]

Now how perpetual was that; I dare say no more perpetual than the Constitution, for as each state, by vote of it's citizens came in so by the same it could go out.

Which is what I've been saying all along. Under the Constitution, states are admitted with the permission of other states as expressed by a vote in Congress, there is no reason at all that they shouldn't be permitted to leave through the same process. But that's not what the Southern states did. They walked out without discussion, and in the process they repudiated responsibility for a share of the national debt, walked out on treaty obligations, and took everything they could get their hands on without compensation. Now how fair is that?