He won’t be taking part in tonight’s presidential debate, but Abraham Lincoln was on the campus of Hofstra University on Tuesday for a series of historical re-enactments focused on race relations and women’s rights.

An actor portraying the nation’s 16th president spoke about the Civil War and slavery. Other actors and Hofstra students also portrayed the abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe; the suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone; and the civil-rights advocates Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Also represented were Shirley Chisholm, Patsy Takemoto Mink, and Bella Abzug, female presidential hopefuls more than 30 years before Hillary Clinton.

Most of the vignettes were staged in “revival tents” reminiscent of the Circuit Chautauqua, the 19th-century adult-education movement.

Cynthia J. Bogard, director of Hofstra’s Center for Civic Engagement, told The New York Times that the event, dubbed, “Democracy in Performance,” was designed to reflect the historic nature of the 2008 campaign.

“Two of our priorities were to trace the pivotal moments in African-American history and in women’s history in the United States, because of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,” Ms. Bogard said. The nomination of Sarah Palin as Sen. John McCain’s running mate fits in with that theme, she said.

“There’s a woman on one ticket, an African-American on the other,” she said. “So it’s important to remind people how we got here.”