And where, specifically, does it grant the federal government the power to prevent a State from formally withdrawing (‘seceding’) from the union?
They intended to divest the government of the United States of its powers in the southern states. They really meant that.
Yes, they did. When the ratifying States formally withdrew (‘seceded’) from the union formed under the Articles of Confederation, “they intended to divest the [existing] government of the United States of its powers” within their States.
The constitution does not provide for any right of "secession." (They just made the whole thing up.)
On the contrary, in the words of Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas (some of the folks here just love court opinions ;>):
“(W)here the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people [of the States].”
The Constitution is “silent” with regard to the formal withdrawal of member States. It therefore “raises no bar to” such action. Please read the Tenth Amendment – you can find it online.
The only constitutional way to divest the powers of the government of the United States is to amend the constitution pursuant to Article V.
The formal withdrawal (‘secession’) of the Southern States from the union did not constitute a divestiture of powers – it was an exercise of a power reserved by the Constitution itself to “the States respectively, or” their people.
The southern states did not wish to take that route and they didn't even want to litigate the legitimacy of their position. Instead, they just told the government of the United States to take a hike. They didn't care about the wishes or desires of the people of the United States, or the governments of the other states, or the government of the United States.
Just as the ratifying States told the “government of the United States [formed under the Articles of Confederation] to take a hike.” You may wish to refer to the Federalist Papers: James Madison observed that the States would ratify – or not ratify – the new Constitution in a manner completely independent of “the wishes or desires of the people of the United States, or the governments of the other states, or the government of the United States.” The Southern States withdrew from the constitutional union in precisely the same manner in which they had entered it.
At the time, the southern politicians involved in all of this were desperate. They genuinely believed that the preservation of slavery was vital to the preservation of the southern culture. So they took a gamble. And they lost. And now we know that the preservation of slavery was not vital to the preservation of southern culture.
Motivation is in effect irrelevant to the issue of the constitutionality of secession. Without a constitutional prohibition of secession, the people of the Southern States could have seceded just so they could wear their underwear on the outside – and it would have been legal.
;>)
If the constitution had been written to provide for "secession," it may or may not have provided for a motivational predicate. But it wasn't written to provide for "secession," so your point is both speculative and meaningless.
Motive is only an issue with regard to "secession" because it was the desire to protect slavery that motivated the southern politicians to invent the "secession" argument. The only difference between the declarations of secession and our Declaration of Independence concerned the reasons (motivations) for the declarations. The Declaration of Independence were not legal under British law and the declarations of secession were not legal under American constitutional law.
"Secession" has been totally discredited as a fraud. Slavery has also been discredited. There's no more than a handful of people out there who support either of these notions anymore.
And most of those aren't in the south. They're in bunkers in Idaho now.