BETHEL — More than 25 people attended the Bethel Historical Society’s program “Lincoln and the Civil War” on Saturday afternoon at the Dr. Moses Mason House.
The program marked the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865.
The society displayed exhibits from a private collection featuring original letters signed by Lincoln, preserved wildflowers that he had picked, photographs and an engraving of the president.
The display included a huge portrait painting of Lincoln that was given to Gould Academy by Charles P. Bartlett of Gould’s Class of 1915 in memory of Bartlett’s brother, Alton Bartlett of the Class of 1914.
“I was glad to have such a good turnout today,” Randall H. Bennett, executive director, said following the event that featured a film segment from the History Channel’s “Abraham Lincoln Biography” documentary.
The society-aired segment features longtime Lincoln scholars sharing their knowledge about Lincoln and his personality and actions leading up to, during and after the Civil War. It includes his assassination.
The film touched on how the typhoid fever death in February 1862 of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie adversely affected them. It also detailed the president’s battle with depression and his frequent trips to battlefields to meet with Union soldiers. Lincoln was the only U.S. president who exposed himself to enemy fire during a war.
The film notes that Lincoln wasn’t assassinated because of his Emancipation Proclamation freeing the country’s slaves, but because, during a speech, he said he wanted to give African-Americans the right to vote. John Wilkes Booth, who heard that speech, killed Lincoln two days later.
After the movie, Bennett and retired executive director of the society, Stan Howe, held a short discussion about Lincoln and the film.
“I’ve seen lots of films about Lincoln, but this one seems to cover more aspects of his personality,” Howe said. “He was a tremendously complex man, and to see it all here in all these various commentaries, you can’t really appreciate it until you’ve seen this film. For 50 minutes, I think it really gives a real cross-section about what was thought of Lincoln.”
Howe agreed with an audience member, saying that Lincoln grew into the presidency with no resources after overcoming a terrible childhood and “made so much of it.”
“It’s incomprehensible what he must have had to go through (during his presidency through the Civil War) if you look at the numbers of casualties,” Norman Clanton of Bethel said. “You can’t comprehend those numbers.”
“From the way he looked in 1861 to 1865, the war aged him terribly,” Howe said.
Others in the audience, including Paul Frederic of Starks, shared their connections with Lincoln and the Civil War.
Frederic, a retired geography professor from the University of Maine at Farmington, said he attended the society program in memory of his wife Elizabeth who passed away in January.
Elizabeth Frederic shared a birthday with Lincoln and Charles Darwin. While not a Lincoln scholar, she was a big fan, her husband said.
He said his wife had been to Ford’s Theater where Lincoln was assassinated. “She was into Lincoln long before she ran across me.”
Frederic said he has a personal connection to the Civil War in that four brothers of his great-grandfather Peter Frederic served with the 9th Maine, which specialized in siege warfare.
Of the brothers, Llewellyn Frederic was killed during the Siege of Richmond on Sept. 29, 1864. Sept. 29 is Paul Frederic’s birthday. Martin Frederic emerged from the war as a lieutenant; Cushman Frederic died soon after the war of deteriorating health from it; and the fourth was William Frederic.
Paul Frederic said his wife Liz in 2006 “insisted we do the Lincoln Trail,” which is the exact route traveled by Abraham Lincoln from Kentucky to Illinois.
“So we took a lengthy vacation from Lincoln’s cabin to his tomb,” Frederic said. “I had grown to respect that man more than I would have any other way and I really feel for him and what he did for our country.”
Frederic said he’d never seen Saturday’s film, but said it adeptly revealed how Lincoln changed “from a ragtag kid out in the Midwest who was self-educated to probably our greatest president, and he’s to be admired.”
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