In a single sentence to be found in Lincoln’s second inaugural address the country and the world have the most complete portrayal of his character. When he was inaugurated for a second term as President, on the 4th of March, 1865, the military power of the Confederacy was broken, and many in his position would have exhibited the pride of the victor over the vanquished on such an occasion; but after stating in the kindest and most temperate language the duty of himself and of the patriotic people of the country to protect the Union against dismemberment, he does not utter a word of resentment against the South. “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” was the brief and eloquent sentence in which he defined the duty of those who had then substantially destroyed the power of the Rebellion. That beautiful expression came from the heart of Abraham Lincoln, and it profoundly impressed the whole country, then wildly impassioned by the bitterness of fraternal strife. He knew the resentments which must confront him in restoring the shattered fragments of the Union, and his supreme desire was to have the bitterness of the conflict perish when peace came. No man who has filled the Presidential chair was so vindictively and malignantly defamed as was Lincoln in the South. The opponents of the war in the North were guilty of unpardonable assaults upon his integrity, his ability, and his methods, but the South had no knowledge of him, as he had filled no important part in national affairs before his election to the Presidency; and his humble birth in Kentucky, close by the birthplace of Jefferson Davis, and his exaggerated rudeness of appearance and manner made the people of the South ready to believe anything to his discredit. He was proclaimed throughout the Confederacy as a second Nero; as a bloody and remorseless butcher; as a vulgar clown who met the sorrows of the nation with ribald jest. Not a single virtue was conceded to him.