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Reading through the comments the concept of MAD (mutually assured destruction) was the first thing that come to my mind. Unless Texans undertook the route described in Publius’s post #110 MAD would almost inevitably be the result.

Secession isn’t simply spinning around three times while shouting “I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee!” There’s a ton of things that must be negotiated as a necessary part of any organized withdrawal.

Our time would be better spent finding ways to minimizing the power of leftists.

The problem with MAD is that Texas may have nuclear weapons stationed on its soil, but it doesn't have the launch codes. The federal entity would be more likely to use biological weapons against Texas while denying their use.

Back to 1861.

Had the South returned their representatives and senators to Congress to negotiate an amicable divorce, there would have been three burning issues.

The status of lands ceded by the states to the federal entity to protect port facilities. Fort Sumter is a classic example.
Payment of all debts owed by the states to the federal entity in gold. Remember, we were on a gold exchange standard at the time.
The status of runaway property crossing from a Southern (former) state to a state in the re-formed US.

That last one would have been a critically nasty bone of contention in congressional negotiations. The Southern attitude would have been that slaves are property, property is sacred, and thus runaway property should have no protection simply because it crosses a new international boundary. The North would have accepted none of that. A number of historians have stated that that one point alone would have guaranteed an inevitable armed conflict over secession.

There would be bones of contention today, and federal land and debts owed to the federal entity would be among the largest. Thank God we don't have slavery to fight over.

As Lincoln understood, a constitutional amendment and its attendant debate would provide the proper platform to set the terms of divorce. It would be the one technique to get around the Supreme Court's 1869 decision in Texas v. White, where it stated that the Union was permanent and indivisible.