Yes, he did and there was that Nullification Ordinance in 1832 and President Jackson's formal written response. At about the same time, he asked that the folks in South Carolina be informally advised that he was prepared to personally lead an army into South Carolina and "hang the first secessionist I see from the first tree I can reach." So, it was pretty clear how that Southern president felt about the "right to secede."
I have read the Constitution, and saw nothing to prevent a State from dissociating itself from the Union.
We do see things differently. I believe that unlike the Articles of Confederation (a league of states), the Constitution creates political bonds between the citizens of the United States. The Constitution begins with the words "We the people of the United States." Patrick Henry argued that the Constitution should not be ratified because it was apparent to him from the text of the proposed Constitution that its effect would be to convert the existing "confederation" of states into a "great consolidated government" created by "we the people of the United States" rather than "we the states."
As an individual, I have political bonds with all other Americans. I also have personal constitutional rights as an American citizen. I have first amendment rights to speech, religion and press. I have second amendment rights to own a personal firearm. I have the right to vote for individuals to represent me in the U.S. Congress. If my state proposes to sentence me to live in one of its dungeons or to kill me, I have a right to a trial, I have a right to be represented by an attorney, I have a right to be judged by a jury and a slough of other procedural rights. Also, I have the right to seek the assistance of a United States district court if my state chooses to disregard my rights under the United States Constitution. A "secession" by my state purports to sever my political bonds with other individual Americans, to strip me of my American citizenship and to immediately strip me of every one of my rights under the United States Constitution. I don't believe that a state has the right to do that under our Constitution.
Thus, while you see the issue as one of convenience to the State, I see the issue as including a conflict between the interests of the State and the interests of the individual. As an historical aside, the only time that secession was ever attempted was, according to the secessionists, for the purpose of protecting the institution of slavery. The secessionists were at the time using the machinery of their State governments to prop up a particularly ugly abuse of basic human rights. So, again, we were confronted with a basic conflict between the interests of the State and the interests of individuals. Secessionists always seem to side with the interests of the State at the expense of individual rights and liberties.
Americans have always reserved the right to rebel--it is part of our nature.
That can't be disputed. In fact, that's what happened.
Maybe if a state or county or city or town or village or neighborhood were to someday present a legitimate case showing that a secession was necessary to protect or promote individual rights, then maybe something could be worked out. The problem is that secessionists never seem to be motivated by any interest in individual rights or liberties. It's always about the State and "State's rights."
I do not think the slavery issue was seen as one of human rights except in the most abolitionist quarters. For the north, it was an economic sanction, in one fell swoop divesting the South, both of the means of production and the tremendous investment in slaves, which were seen as property. Any attempt to achieve moral high ground is broken on the rocks of the slaveholders in the north.
Recalling that Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel, was indeed abolitionist agitprop, and that despite the vexation with which we view slavery, it is unlikely that abuses of slaves beyond their station were widespread. Taken from a rational viewpoint, to intentionally damage the means of production would be folly at best. Trying to capture the mindset, the destruction of valuable income producing property would be foolish, as would the failure to maintain that in the best of operating condition.
While there are always components of any culture which practice cruelty and neglect, the widespread practice of such would lead to rapid impoverishment if the viability of an enterprise depended on the subjects of that cruelty. It is therefore safe to say, that despite the absence of freedom, otherwise the subjects of the institution were likely to be reasonably well kept.
We see the same today, only the government itself has become the owner, and we even liken that condition to the former institution by calling it the Democrat Plantation.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, only now the one which would enforce the union is the one which is ignoring the selfsame Rights to which you (and I) refer. We have those Rights, but they are effectively being usurped by the very Government which is supposed to guarantee them. No-knock raids, TSA pat-downs, NSA recording of electronic transmissions whether broadcast or sent to an individual, IRS invasiveness, and a multitude of laws, conditions, and infringements on the right to bear arms, all weigh heavily on the proverbial camel, not to mention the volumes of regulations which encumber private property.
The contract is increasingly breached, not by the people, but by the selfsame government which is supposed to enforce its terms, regardless of the whim of the masses. That failure, that breach, widens when one considers the failure to secure our borders (provide for the common defense), and even to reward the invaders. Other Federal digressions from the Constitution would be too burdensome to list comprehensively, but range from regulating the food you eat, what you drink, the means to illuminate your home, to even how much water your toilet may flush--yet only a small portion of the scope and nature of the potential for abuses from acts such as the NDAA and Obamacare.
So, without encouraging such, in the event there is another attempt at secession, (like that of several counties in Colorado attempting to secede from that State and form another), it is likely that it will be done in the interest of individual freedom--freedom supposedly guaranteed by the very governments which increasingly strip us of our Liberty daily.
We are not seeing today's situation through the filters of the victor's history books, but as it happens.
With that in mind, I would say there is much more to the story of that earlier conflict than will be gleaned from books published in Boston, Mass or Connecticut or New York, as most of the history texts of my youth were. The prism of the victor's viewpoint will color the conclusions of those who learn only that, and the filter of the surviving contemporary media is unlikely to let unexpurgated accounts pass on to posterity.
Human nature does not change, only the trimmings. If you examine the press of today and the reporting of events now, you get an example of how the biases inherent in those accounts could affect the history of the future as well. Hopefully, that history will be published in some semblance of English.
There are a lot of unhappy, very lonely people out there.