A slave trial involving Abraham Lincoln defending a slave owner will be reenacted while showing Coles County’s abolition history.

“Most people don’t recognize that Lincoln ever represented a slave owner, and it seems to be kind of a surprise for a lot of people that he would have done so,” said Renee Henry, coordinator of Trial and Tribulations.

Trial and Tribulations is a historical program that recreates the 1847 Matson Slave Trial.

According to the Trial and Tribulations website, the Matson Slave Trial is a case where slave owner Robert Matson brought some of his slaves from Kentucky to work on his farm near Oakland, Ill.

Jane Bryant and her four children were some of Matson’s slaves, while Jane’s husband Anthony Bryant worked on the farm as a free man.

When the Bryant children were threatened to be sold back into slavery in the South, the case was brought to trial in Charleston, eventually ending in the Bryant family’s hope of gaining freedom in Illinois.

Henry said she decided to work with other historians to put the project together because the trial is part of local history.

“It’s one of the top five trials in Coles County history, and it’s one of the top 10 in Lincoln’s career,” Henry said.

Henry said volunteers, including reenactors, are still needed to help with the project this year.

“We’d love to have any Eastern students that would like to (volunteer). We help with the costuming that they would need to wear,” Henry said.

Traci Montgomery, of the Independence Pioneer Village, helps organize Trial and Tribulations and said participants of the event will benefit from seeing the reenactment.

“There are a lot of folks who would prefer to see that firsthand rather than to read something from a book,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery said she hopes the event will help shed light on the Matson Trial and observers can look at the situation of each character and gain different perspectives.

“They’re just so many instances that you can actually step into a thought process of why did this happen the way it did, how would I have reacted had that been me and how things have changed since that time,” Montgomery said.

Henry said the reenactment will allow the viewers to see how Lincoln grew in his beliefs about slavery and the role that the state played in slavery abolition.

Trial and Tribulations will be held in Oakland beginning at the Hiram Rutherford House where participants will meet interpreters.

Then the participants will go to the Independence Pioneer Village where the recreation of Charleston and the trial will take place.

The program will be held Sept. 17 from noon to 3 p.m. and again from 4 to 7 p.m.

Ticket prices for the event are $9 in advance and $12 on the event day for individuals and $20 in advance and $30 on the event day for families.

Alesha Bailey can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].