"The Constitution is silent on the subject of secession. Hence, pro-secessionists maintain secession was a legal right. To this, anti-secessionists often say (and here I paraphrase),"

"It is absurd to imagine the framers would intentionally include in the Constitution, either by its presence or omission, a provision that would destroy the very nation they were creating"
....

The Constitution is NOT silent on the issue of secession. People just don't seem to read their Declaration of Independence and US Constitution very well do they.

The Declaration of Independence clearly states, Quote ... "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." ... "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,..."

This foundational document clearly states that it is the RIGHT of the people to abolish whatever ties they may have with any Government which is in their opinion is destructive to their wellbeing.

The United States Constitution in the Ninth Amendment states, Quote ... "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

In other words just because the Constitution did not mention the "Right of secession", this right, because it was not specifically denied regulated or restricted within that Constitution, was a right NOT enumerated and accordingly could not "be construed to deny or disparage" it as a right "retained by the people."

As preferable as "Preserving the Union" may have been, in our opinion today, the same could have been said of "Preserving the British Empire" in 1776. If it was a "right" of the American colonist to secede from the British Empire in 1776, as declared in our own Declaration of Independence, then under the 9th Amendment the same "right" existed for the Southern States in 1861.

Thomas Jefferson the main writer of the Declaration of Independence and our 3rd United State President clearly said that the people had a "right", even a DUTY. to be armed well enough to rise up and overthrown a tryanical government. That is why the 2nd Amendment was placed in the Bill of RIGHTS, as an addendum to the Constitution before the states would ratify that Constitution.

So the "right" of the people to seperate themselves from a Government which makes itself hostile to any portion of the people that it governs is well established in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the relating documents and papers of the founding fathers. And that those "rights" can not be LEGALLY denied to the people until you burn the Declaration of Independence and the 2nd and 9th Amendments.