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Abraham Lincoln was an honorable man who wanted to reunite the North and the South during the Reconstruction period.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on 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.

Lincoln believed the Constitution created a nation. And, as he stated in his first inaugural address, he believed he had a duty to uphold the Constitution and that meant no one would be allowed to withdraw from it. It was as if he personally was responsible for preserving the legacy the Founding Fathers had bequeathed. And he was not going to see that legacy diminished in the slightest.

He didn't know exactly how he would preserve the Union. When he left Springfield he told his neighbors he faced a task greater than the one that faced George Washington and he asked their prayers to help him accomplish it. But his commitment to preserving the Union was never ever in doubt. He never ever wavered from the principal of preserving the nation. During the war public opinion often went against him. He was not even sure that he would be reelected in 1864 but he did not intend to back down at all. And when he did win he did not back down. Many other northerners, including William Seward, his own Secretary of State, would have. But not Abraham Lincoln. And in the end he prevailed. Today we owe our nation to one man more than any other: Abraham Lincoln.