Why do we say "With malice toward none, with charity for all"?

Meaning:

Feel no ill will towards anyone, feel kindness toward everyone.

Background:

This is a quote from the final paragraph of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address given on March 4, 1865, a little under six weeks before his assassination.

"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."

John Quincy Adams expressed a similar thought in an 1838 letter:

"In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold to bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do."

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