PORTSMOUTH, R.I. — The words of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address rang out in Town Hall on Tuesday night — on the 150th anniversary of the address that so many schoolchildren have memorized.
History teacher Fred Zilian, dressed as the 16th president of the United States, recited the words that have come to define the Civil War and the pursuit of equality it embodied.
“Four score and seven years ago...” Zilian began, holding the paper he had written the speech on with his left hand and the lapel of his black suit coat with his right hand, as he undoubtedly has done many times while portraying Lincoln in his one-man play, “Honest Abe.”
Zilian not only recited what has been called the most famous speech in American history, he told those gathered in the council chambers about the background of the speech and gave a brief history of the Civil War itself.
Zilian, speaking as Lincoln, said the Civil War confronted the nation with four major questions.
At the outset, the main question was whether the nation was a federation with the federal government having supreme power or a confederation with the states having the most power.
The second question involved the contradiction of being a beacon of freedom while allowing the existence of slavery. Of the 31 million people in the United States at the time of the Civil War, about 4 million were slaves.
The third issue revolved around war powers and how much the government could abridge civil liberties.
Zilian posed the fourth question this way: “Is self-government an absurdity? Was self-government just a whimsical, fanciful idea?”
Speaking as Lincoln, he noted that the nation has survived for almost 240 years as a republic and a democracy, outliving ancient Athens.
But he warned: “Don’t take our system of government for granted.”
Lincoln believed that presidential power came from the people, not from the states, and Zilian quoted the opening words of the Constitution, “We the People.”
Zilian dismissed popular myths about the Gettysburg Address and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. For example, he said, the president did not write the speech on a piece of paper on the train on the way to Gettysburg.
“No! No! I never wrote speeches like that,” the actor said. “I wanted my remarks to be brief but powerful. I wanted certainly to honor the ... valor, courage, the dedication, the commitment, the last full measure of devotion that all soldiers gave there.” He pointed out that the president did not restrict that to the Union fallen.
History notes that the president’s hand was shaking when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation on July 4, 1863. He came to the signing after shaking hands for more than two hours in a White House receiving line in celebration of Independence Day.
“To this day, I am happy I signed it,” the president said. “It was another step forward in the march for freedom.”
Zilian has performed his one-man show as Lincoln for more than 15 years. He is a history and political science teacher at Portsmouth Abbey School and Salve Regina University. In addition to marking the sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg Address, Tuesday’s program was part of the town of Portsmouth’s 375th anniversary celebration.
Zilian said Lincoln sought to underline the words Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”
The president also wanted to identify that “great task remaining before us.”
“Certainly we had to win the war, but I was thinking of higher things than that,” Zilian said, speaking as Lincoln. “If you look at the words carefully, I use the words ‘a new birth of freedom.’ We have to expand this definition of freedom which began 100 years before — four score and seven years before — when we broke from Great Britain over rights and freedom.
“We had to re-anoint ourselves and redefine our concept of freedom. I wanted to underline that.
“And the second thing I wanted to underline was that the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity to prove that a popular government is not an absurdity.
“Those two things coupled together were the great tasks remaining before us.”
Zilian then delivered the Gettysburg Address, wearing his black suit, white shirt, crooked bow tie and black boots.
When he finished, he said: “Those words still resonate. I still enjoy the words.”