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The Thirteen Colonies had just successfully seceded from the United Kingdom and were debating how much power to give a potential federal government.

The Thirteen Colonies had successfully "seceded" not by legal means, but by overthrowing the legal form of government, and British constitutional law. That is, they revolted. They waged a revolution. They did not go through a legal process to assert their independence. From their perspective, they had exhausted their legal remedies to have their constitutional rights protected, to no avail. Out of options, they ignored the law and waged a war for independence. In order to gain that independence, they had to win that war and then negotiate a treaty with the British recognizing the independence of the revolutionary colonies.

In the run-up to the U.S. Civil War, it was often acknowledged that the Confederates did have the same "right of revolution". But this is not the same as a constitutional right. By definition, it is extra-constitutional -- that is, it's a right to be exercised when the constitution is not working the way you want it to work. In a word, it is unconstitutional.

While there are many other speeches dealing with the topic of the constitutionality of secession vs. the extra-constitutionality of revolution, the two most relevant to the outbreak of the war were made by outgoing President James Buchanan and incoming President Abraham Lincoln.

In his final State of the Union address (called the "Annual Message To Congress" at the time), on December 3, 1860, Buchanan described the difference between a revolutionary right and a constitutional right at length. The money shot is this paragraph (emphasis mine):

"It may be asked, then, Are the people of the States without redress against the tyranny and oppression of the Federal Government? By no means. The right of resistance on the part of the governed against the oppression of their governments can not be denied. It exists independently of all constitutions, and has been exercised at all periods of the world's history. Under it old governments have been destroyed and new ones have taken their place. It is embodied in strong and express language in our own Declaration of Independence. But the distinction must ever be observed that this is revolution against an established government, and not a voluntary secession from it by virtue of an inherent constitutional right. In short, let us look the danger fairly in the face. Secession is neither more nor less than revolution. It may or it may not be a justifiable revolution, but still it is revolution."

On March 4, 1861, Lincoln made similar statements in his First Inaugural Address (emphasis mine):

"If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak--but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?...

"But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.

"It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances....

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

In fact, not every Confederate agreed that they were engaged in war trying to defend a legal, constitutional act. Plenty of Confederates acknowledged that they were engaged in an extra-constitutional revolution. Among them was Robert E. Lee, who confided to fellow soldier Charles Anderson in February 1861:

"If Virginia stands by the old Union, so will I. But, if she secedes (though I do not believe in secession as a constitutional right, nor that there is a sufficient cause for revolution), then I will still follow my native State with my sword, and if need be with my life."

Going back to the Revolutionary period, the Founders who engaged in the war, and those who drafted the Constitution, universally acknowledged an extra-legal right of revolution. But this is not the same as a Constitutional right. But, given the fact that the Colonies had just overthrown a constitution by waging war, why didn't they address secession in the U.S Constitution, seeing as it was a distinct possibility?

Well, that kind of misses the whole point of why there was a U.S. Constitution in the first place. Under the Articles of Confederation, there was a bunch of infighting between the individual states, and the Articles were ineffective in resolving these disputes (or so the Federalists who championed the Constitution believed). The infighting threatened disunion, which could very possibly lead to further war.

The Articles gave the states a lot of leeway in doing things their own way, and when any state decided to subvert or ignore a federal law, the Articles didn't give much to the feds in regards to enforcement. Any changes to the Articles required unanimous consent by all thirteen states, and since the document also states that the only powers of Congress are those "expressly" stated, an individual state could effectively veto any action by the feds that wasn't sanctioned in the literal text of the document.

Thus, with the U.S. Constitution, the Founders were trying to find a way to strengthen the federal government, so that the states could no longer subvert federal law, but without scaring off too many people/states who might see it as an unreasonable power grab.

The issue of secession was, more or less, raised at the Constitutional Convention only once, as far as I can tell. On May 31, 1787, a resolution was proposed that essentially became the supremacy clause -- the laws of the U.S. Constitution supersede the laws passed by state legislatures. Further, the proposed resolution would "authoriz[e] an exertion of the force of the whole [United States] agst. a delinquent State".

James Madison argued against this explicit wording:

"'A union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force agst. a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.' He hoped that such a system would be framed as might render this recourse unnecessary, and moved that the clause be postponed. This motion was agreed to..."

However, notice that Madison isn't saying that the federal government should not have the power to enforce the Constitution, by force of arms if need be. Just that he worried it would be used by dissenting states to justify dissolving their bond to the Constitution -- revolution, in other words. Instead, he hoped that this new framework -- the U.S. Constitution -- would render such actions unnecessary, because each state would have plenty of Constitutional protections against an encroaching federal government.

Lucky for us, Madison lived long enough to give his thoughts on the matter of secession, and he was decidedly against any interpretation of the Constitution that proposed that secession was legal. Several of his opinions were given in private letters, and one was published in the influential and widely-read North American Review in the publication's October 1830 edition. Elsewhere, he wrote to Robert Hayne (one of the leading pro-secession politicians of the 1830s), Nicholas Trist (the editor of the North American Review), and Alexander Rives (another early pro-secessionist), all expounding at length on the legality of secession. They all kind of say the same thing -- they may be best articulated in the Hayne letter. But to save you the time, Madison basically says that the Constitution gives a host of remedies to protect states and people from the tyranny of the majority, up to and including the right to exit via Constitutional Amendment if the offended state feels so oppressed. But ultimately, the Constitution is based upon the majority principle, which he says is a key ingredient to forming a free government. To Trist:

"The essential difference between a free Govt. & Govts. not free, is that the former is founded in compact, the parties to which are mutually and equally bound by it.

And to Hayne:

"...to establish a positive & permanent rule giving such a power [of nullifcation or secession] to such a minority, over such a majority, would overturn the first principle of a free Government, and in practice could not fail to overturn the Govt. itself."

Hey there,

Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.

If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!