There is nothing in the founding of the country or the writing of the Constitution that supports an interpretation of legal unilateral state secession.
The secesionists knew that, and largely based their arguments on natural law such as sprang from the Declaration of Independence. Since the conditions of the D of I didn't apply either, one argument is as bankrupt as the other.
Walt
To the contrary. It is an inherent consequence of the very foundation upon which the constitution and the nation itself is built. As Alexis de Tocqueville so eloquently put it:
"However strong a government may be, it cannot easily escape from the consequences of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their sovereignty, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right. In order to enable the Federal government easily to conquer the resistance that may be offered to it by any of its subjects, it would be necessary that one or more of them should be specially interested in the existence of the Union, as has frequently been the case in the history of confederations."
And that was 30 years before the war, Walt. Tocqueville was an extremely intelligent individual and I'm willing to bet that he didn't just make that up out of nowhere. To the contrary, he studied the nature of the American government and carried out its consequences to their ends. If a union is voluntarily created, those who created it may similarly leave. And if they express their clear will to do so in an indisputable demonstration of an attempt at self government, who is to stop them from doing so?
As Tocqueville continued, none of the others nor the nation itself had that right. But that does not mean that none would do so. Rather that possibility remained, and was anticipated to occur at the hands of those who had a vested interest in the continuation of the union itself. He also predicted that persons with this vested interest would rarely if ever admit to it publicly, and rather would conduct their campaign of opposition to disunion under the "borrowed name" of the union itself.
Now who does that sound like...
Walt, I don't disagree. But after all your time on the sort of threads are you saying you have never encountered someone who does not accept this premise?
My point is that arguments based on your premise above, or the opposite one in the original article, are not going to sway the other side. The premise itself must be commonly accepted first.
Those who ignore this, and try to build further persuasive arguments without addressing the premise itself, are guilty of the logical fallacy "begging the question."