“Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.” In his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln explained why his duty as the newly-elected president required him to treat secession as an act of rebellion and not a legitimate political action. Nothing less than the survival of self-government was at stake. As the duly elected president, Lincoln believed that majority rule constrained by “constitutional checks” and informed by public opinion was “the only true sovereign of a free people.” Rule by any other principle would lead to chaos or despotism. Moreover, Lincoln thought the union of the American states was perpetual, and that it could not be “peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who make it.”