Too many have drunk the koolaid and believe secession was illegal. There was nothing in the Constitution banning, or making illegal, secession by any state, until 1869. The states that ratified the Constitution would never have done so had there been any wording in it to the effect that a state, once admitted to Union, could never exit it. They had just fought a war against tyranny, and absolute power of a centralized government was too fresh in their minds to have ever agreed to a document that would take the power to secede from a corrupt or overpowering government away from the states. No state would have ever agreed to that when the constitution was ratified. Therefore, it wasn't in there. If it had been, there would have been no reason to put it there in 1869. There was a near secession by New England states over the War of 1812. The North did not want to lose the economic base of the South (cotton and rice) for foreign trade, and used illegal military force to prevent it.

SRH

May God bless America and those who defend her.