“WIDE AWAKE: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War” by Jon Grinspan (Bloomsbury)
164 years qgo, American politics was in state of dramatic change, as new parties were emerging that challenged the political status quo of the past two decades. The Republicans were tired of the tiny minority that controlled the nation politically, whose influence was curtailing free speech and running roughshod over the majority of Americans with their determination to control the narrative. (Sound familiar? In 1860 it was to continue Slavery, in 2024 it’s the invented issue of Gender Confusion.)
What arose from that political turmoil, with the Democratic party split into two halves (North and South) and a 4th party running a candidate for president, was an energized Republican Party. That was greatly supported by a forgotten movement, the “Wide Awakes”. It was primarily an anti-slavery (or abolitionist) youth movement, involving young working men from age 16 to about 30. They were tired of being left out of the political conversation, tired of seeing politicians constantly fighting over the growth of slavery into new territories and states, so they decided to create an organization to encourage support of Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. This they accomplished splendidly, growing in influence and size as the organization’s ideas spread across the Northern half of the USA that year.
It was not without opposition. Some people who agreed with them were a little intimidated by hundreds of young men in black marching, accompanied by musicians, torches, fireworks and guest speakers. People who were offended by their antipathy to slavery, Southern Democrats who lived in the North, pro-slavery Congress members or merchants, racists and rowdies, and political opponents, responded violently. They were used to bullying the Silent Majority into unwilling compliance; they were NOT accustomed to people standing up boldly against them. These confrontations often grew vicious, with bricks and cobblestones hurled at the heads of Wide-Awakes, and increasingly the use of knives and guns.
By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, several Southern states had already seceded, and more were threatening. The Wide-Awakes realized their role as political advocates was ended. Many of them would enlist in the Union Army, and meet for reunions for years after war. Their history deserves to be told, as they might have been a key piece in why the war broke out when it did. The silent majority was no longer content to be silent, thanks to the bravery and the example of the Wide-Awakes. When politics got violent at “a moment of escalating regional and ideological tensions” in 1860, after decades of tensions amid tempers simmering, the forces that looked to disunion and civil war prevailed.
The author is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
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