There's never a right to rebel, that's sort of the definition of the word. It's a reaction that comes about when all the legal avenues have been exhausted or hit brick walls.
The federal system does guarantee rights to the states, but treaty enforcement goes more to balance of power than the text of the agreement. Early on when the local militias were our primary fighting force and we had to hire pirates to be our navy, state rights were secure.
These days not so much. For example, I wouldn't bet on stop and frisk to stop the Army Rangers if NYC voted to return to dutch rule (or Lenape).
Also, not to be a textualist, 'right of the people to alter or abolish'.
If the DoI is a reflection of understood common law, and it asserts a right to rebel (which, of course, it does), then there is a right to rebel.
Which is not that different than "all legal avenues exhausted" but you're correct, it does claim it as a literal right. Thanks for inspiring me to re-read it.
It's not just John Locke and Thomas Paine making up theories; the page goes on to list several constitutions that explicitly grant this right.
But we tend to agree that rights are not granted by the government, and while we may not agree what does grant it, the right to rebel against that which does not grant rights does still exist.
> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This is in contrast to many prior systems of government, where the privileges available to a populace were whatever the monarch decided they could do, or which they had extracted as concessions from the monarchs via agreements like the Magna Carta.
0: http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amend...