Frederick Zilian, a teacher at Portsmouth Abbey, says: “He [Lincoln] loved learning, I love learning. He loved words, I love words.”

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

There may not be anything new to say about Abraham Lincoln, as Frederick Douglass once declared. But Frederick Zilian Jr. — Naval War College graduate, Lincoln devotee and burgeoning actor — has developed untold ways to portray our 16th president.

And not, necessarily, in the commonplace cameos we’ve come to associate with Lincoln.

Let’s be honest. We all think we know what Abraham Lincoln looked and sounded like.

But Zilian might alter that deep-voiced, elegant Abe image on Tuesday, when he presents “An Hour with Honest Abe: A Monologue By and Conversation with Him,” at the Jamestown Philomenian Library.

The Portsmouth resident and teacher will repeat the program on Feb. 12, Lincoln’s birthday, in a public presentation at Portsmouth Abbey, where he is faculty dean and history instructor.

Though Zilian, 59, has had a lifelong interest in history, his curiosity about Honest Abe actually grew out of lesson plans at Portsmouth Abbey, where he has taught since the early 1990s. Having read a Lincoln biography that deeply impressed him, Zilian began bringing the rail-splitter to life in informal classroom drama.

“At first it was too long,” he says. “I tweaked it.”

Another actor’s presidential shows also inspired him.

“James Whitmore,” he said, who portrayed Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman. “I was just totally taken by it.”

EVENTUALLY, ZILIAN fine-tuned his own portrayal, and moved it outside of the classroom to local libraries in an attempt to inspire audiences. Each time he becomes Lincoln, Zilian adds to and subtracts from the portrayal, in the process squashing images of Lincoln passed down through the generations.

For example, “you wouldn’t want to hear his vocals,” said Zilian, explaining that his research shows Lincoln had “a high-pitched, squeaky voice.”

And he exhibits Lincoln’s unusual gait and manner of dress, hiking up his trousers to display the high waders Lincoln wore, paying, it seems, little attention to his ensembles.

“He was a mess,” Zilian said describing the towering genius only in terms of his outward appearance. (Lincoln himself said, “Common looking people are the best in the world. That is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.”)

While Lincoln stood about 6-foot-4, Zilian is an inch or two less, and does need to add hair to his face and head in his portrayals.

But apart from the physical, there is no folly in Zilian’s respect for Lincoln the man.

“His honesty, his persistence in adversity. I think he was spiritual.

“He loved learning, I love learning. He loved words, I love words.”

ALTHOUGH ZILIAN’S intensified interest in Lincoln has arrived in the past decade, history has been a lifelong pursuit.

A New Jersey native, Zilian said that as a young man he considered acting, but chose West Point instead.

“The price was right,” he said, and he liked the physical and mental challenge it offered.

Zilian went on to earn a master’s degree in international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, and a second master’s degree, with highest distinction, from the Naval War College. He received his doctorate, in international relations and strategic studies, from Johns Hopkins’ Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in 1996.

Zilian has been an adjunct faculty member at the Naval War College and Salve Regina University. He is the dean of faculty at Portsmouth Abbey, where he headed up the history department from 1999 until last year, and teaches classes ranging from advanced European history to German.

He also teaches ballroom dancing within his own dance company, Stardust Dance Lessons.

He says that like Lincoln, he sought creative ways of being educated, greatly benefiting from the education made available to him at the U.S. Military Academy. (Lincoln was, for the most part, self-educated.)

“I love my country and am very appreciative of the system,” he said. “American taxpayers paid for my education.”

ZILIAN, WHO IS on the advisory board of the state’s Bicentennial Commission, points out the upcoming bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, Feb. 12, 2009, hoping that events on the state and national level will bring prominence to Lincoln’s ideas.

And in his one-man programs, he also hopes “to increase awareness of Lincoln’s life. He was a true role model for all of us.”

Sometimes, said Zilian, he poses a question to himself and to others: “What would Lincoln do?”

If, for example, Lincoln had had access to Internet information, Zilian thinks he might have appointed a committee to figure out how it could be used “to raise us up, rather than just entertain.”

How about the war in Iraq?

“He would probably support most of Bush’s tough measures in the Patriot Act, abridging freedoms in the name of security and victory,” Zilian said. “He might recall some of the measures he instituted during the Civil War, all necessary in his view to guard the Union and subdue the rebels.

“He would be very troubled by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal a few years ago and warn us against hypocrisy … Also, such scandals, he would say, can decay the moral fiber of our nation. We must keep ourselves on the highest possible moral plane.”

But perhaps these are questions to ask the gentleman himself, in person.

“An Hour with Honest Abe: a Monologue by and Conversation with Him,” will be presented at the Jamestown Philomenian Library, 26 North Rd., Tuesday from 7 to 8:15 p.m. Call (401) 423-7280 for information.

It will also be presented at Portsmouth Abbey, 285 Corey’s Lane, Portsmouth, on Feb. 12 at 7 p.m., in the auditorium. Call (401) 683-2000 for information.

E-mail Zilian at AbeRI200@aol.com

afleming@projo.com