With your line of reasoning...just replace "North" with "Husband" and "South" with "Wife"...then see if your logic is seen as rational by anyone not delusional...
Once the South signed the Constitution, it was part of One Nation, Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All. If the South wanted to be part of a different nation, then it shouldn't have signed. But when it signed and 70 years later tried to secede, then what it was doing was breaking apart the indivisible nation of the USA, which is treason.
What the hell does something an 19th Century National Socialist wrote as a pledge of allegiance to the flag have to do with right of states to secede? The pledge of allegiance was written after the War of Northern Aggression. And there wasn't liberty and justice for all.
Yes there was. And he wasn't a national socialist, he was a Christian socialist. There's a big difference there. The Pledge of Allegience has everything to do with secession, because it enshrines the fact that the nation is one and indivisible, not divisible into whatever parts that secessionists want it to be divisible into.
75% of southern's did not own slaves, they worked their own farms. Southerner's were forced to pay 35% tariffs while Northern industrialist paid considerably less in taxes. Southerner's wouldn't have fought for slavery because by the time the war broke out only the wealthy minority owned any slaves. The Northern states were over represented in government and used that majority to force, through unfair taxes, southern citizens to pay northern debts.
Okay fine, I admit that the taxes were unfair. But secession/treason is never the answer. Sorry.
The Constitution includes a clause which is the consent of the governed.
Yes it most certainly does. And that consent takes place when the the Constitution is placed in front of the state delegates and they decide to either ratify it or not ratify it. If they choose to not ratify it, then they can go on their merry way. If they choose to ratify it, then whatever state they represent becomes a permanent part of the nation.
This means when the consent is withdrawn they are free to leave.
No they aren't. Their freedom to leave occurs when the delegates which lawfully represent the state in question are sitting in front of the Constitution and deciding whether to ratify it or not ratify it. If they choose not to ratify it, then they don't become part of the nation. But once they ratify it the state that they represent becomes a permanent part of the nation.
Many of the Anti-Federalist would have never signed the US Constitution if it did not include an escape clause. http://mises.org/story/3427 The Inalienable Right of Secession. Really good article about the legal grounds on which secession can be established. Sorry Luke no mention of it being treason.
It doesn't include an escape
clause, but it does include an escape
provision. That escape provision is for the delegates of the territories that are not states yet to not ratify the Constitution. No state is, was, or should be, forced to ratify the Constitution. But once a state has ratified, it has ratified, and it is in for good. What you're saying about antifederalists either makes no sense, or forces me to conclude that they were very confused people. Because there isn't a nation on this earth where any region of that nation can leave whenever it pleases and nobody will try to stop them. That just doesn't exist in the real world.