The hour of triumph called out the characteristic impulses of his nature.  The opposition within the Union party had stung him to the quick.  Now he had his opponents before him, baffled and humiliated.  Not a moment did he lose to stretch out the hand of friendship to all.  “Now that the election is over,” he said, in response to a serenade, “may not all, having a common interest, reunite in a common effort to save our common country?  For my own part, I have striven, and will strive, to place no obstacle in the way.  So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom.  While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be pained or disappointed by the result.  May I ask those who were with me to join with me in the same spirit toward those who were against me?” This was Abraham Lincoln’s character as tested in the furnace of prosperity.

The war was virtually decided, but not yet ended.  Sherman was irresistibly carrying the Union flag through the South.  Grant had his iron hand upon the ramparts of Richmond.  The days of the Confederacy were evidently numbered.  Only the last blow remained to be struck.  Then Lincoln’s second inauguration came, and with it his second inaugural address.  Lincoln’s famous “Gettysburg speech” has been much and justly admired.  But far greater, as well as far more characteristic, was that inaugural in which he poured out the whole devotion and tenderness of his great soul.  It had all the solemnity of a father’s last admonition and blessing to his children before he lay down to die.  These were its closing words:  “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.  Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, `The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’  With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

This was like a sacred poem.  No American President had ever spoken words like these to the American people.  America never had a President who found such words in the depth of his heart.