Wide Awakes in America
May 21, 2016 7:31 PM   Subscribe

Election season, 1860: "Stumping for the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, [a] strange movement electrified the presidential election. Young men from Bangor to San Francisco and from huge Philadelphia clubs to tiny Iowa troupes donned uniforms, lit torches, and “fell in” to pseudomilitary marching companies." The Wide Awakes, as they were known, began as escorts for Republican speakers, but as the campaign season continued, these "political police" became an intimidating presence throughout much of the nation--young, fervent brawlers and unapologetic supporters of an aggressive style of American political combat.

More from Grinspan:
They flooded every northern state and trickled into upper South cities like Baltimore, Wheeling, and St. Louis. Launched in March by “five young dry goods clerks” in Hartford, Connecticut, by November the Wide Awakes had developed into a nationwide grassroots movement with hundreds of thousands of members. Many of the movement’s supporters—and even some of its vociferous opponents—believed “there never was, in this country, a more effective campaign organization than the Wide Awakes.”

Youth and militarism distinguished the Wide Awakes from the hundreds of other clubs milling around nineteenth-century American elections. The organization appealed to white men in their teens, twenties, and thirties, attracting ambitious upstarts sporting youthful goatees who were “beginning to feel their true power.” Using popular social events, an ethos of competitive fraternity, and even promotional comic books, the Wide Awakes introduced many to political participation and proclaimed themselves the newfound voice of younger voters. Though often remembered as part of the Civil War generation stirred by the conflict, these young men became politically active a year before fighting began. The structured, militant Wide Awakes appealed to a generation profoundly shaken by the partisan instability of the 1850s and offered young northerners a much-needed political identity.
A torch rally. A banner, and another banner. Lincoln's honorary membership certificate. A drill manual. More Wide Awakes ephemera and collectibles.

On the Friday before the 1860 election, after a rousing pro-Lincoln speech, Wide Awakes--some with axes strapped to their backs, nominally a tribute to their candidate--clashed with supporters of the opposing party at the corner of 12th Street and Fourth Avenue in Manhattan: "But the tide of battle turned when the young Republicans brought their Lincoln axes into play. They chased the enemy back into the company firehouse and promptly began smashing down its barricaded doors, as other idealistic marchers flung bricks and cobblestones. (News reports are vague about what finally ended the fracas.)" As this article notes, such disturbances had become commonplace by that point.

Their legacy: "The campaign’s militaristic symbolism declared their generation’s attitudes toward partisan combat. ... Club members were reared on stark notions of competition in an age of ephemeral organizations. The Wide Awake generation was coming to see politics as a deadly zero-sum game, and military metaphors acknowledged that a party might be able to massacre its rivals. That was what Seward meant when he joked that “none but Republicans will be born in the United States after the year 1860.” Wearing shiny black capes and practicing infantry drills had nothing to do with preparing for civil war; instead, the symbolism reflected the hope that the Republican party might finally finish off the northern Democracy. The Wide Awakes’ story shows that campaign metaphors are not empty hoopla, but rather display the intimate relationship between citizens and their politics."
posted by MonkeyToes (17 comments total) 42 users marked this as a favorite
 
If you're wondering what enameled cloth is, it's oilcloth.
posted by zamboni at 7:39 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


The organization appealed to white men in their teens, twenties, and thirties, attracting ambitious upstarts sporting youthful goatees who were “beginning to feel their true power.”

It was ever thus!
posted by lunasol at 10:06 PM on May 21, 2016 [8 favorites]


Freedom is only an armband away.
posted by clavdivs at 10:47 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


It all depends on the kind of armband.
posted by not_on_display at 11:59 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


I wonder if there's any connection with Project Wideawake.
posted by The Tensor at 12:57 AM on May 22, 2016


I always had my suspicions about that Mallet.
posted by fullerine at 5:06 AM on May 22, 2016


I haven't read all of the article yet, but this is fascinating. Lots of historical echos -- urban rural divide, the working-class populism at odds with the party leadership, the role of the media in propagating the Wide Awakes, etc..

Thanks for posting!
posted by postcommunism at 6:13 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


The name just makes me think of the phrase "stay woke." Very interesting!
posted by limeonaire at 7:29 AM on May 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


oh my god nobody tell Trump about this.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:56 AM on May 22, 2016 [7 favorites]


Despite the legacy of Lincoln this gives me the heebie jeebies.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:13 AM on May 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


Thanks for this. I've had it on my list for years to do an FPP about the Wide Awake movement, but it required enough research to contextualize it that I kept putting it off. You did a great job. I still have trouble developing a strong understanding of this movement, even as a C19ist, but it definitely reveals a long, strong strain in American political history. Great post.
posted by Miko at 9:23 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


"The Wide Awake generation was coming to see politics as a deadly zero-sum game, and military metaphors acknowledged that a party might be able to massacre its rivals."

It was zero sum. The institution of slavery could not co-exist with free labor. Slavery was wrong. Extirpating the slave power from the United States was a worthy and necessary objective.
posted by wuwei at 10:14 AM on May 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


I just skimmed over Grinspan's article, and I'm left with two questions:

1) What did Lincoln himself think of the Wide Awakes?

2) This bit from near the end: "The creation of the Minute Men is often mentioned as a major stepping-stone on the road to disunion, but few historians note that they were a direct response to the Wide Awakes. The link between secession and the movement is even stronger than previously realized." Is Grinspan trying to assert that the Wide Awakes may have actually brought about the secession and/or the Civil War?
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:37 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is Grinspan trying to assert that the Wide Awakes may have actually brought about the secession and/or the Civil War?

I don't think so, though I think he'd characterize the Wide Awakes as a provocation, and an excuse to form counter-militias (see the section titled "The “Monster Body Guard” Haunts the South" in his essay); more of a harbinger than a direct cause. I haven't found anything on Lincoln's response to the movement, but as Grinspan notes, their offer to escort Lincoln to his inauguration was declined.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:36 PM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Upon further digging, Halloween Jack...

This blogger cites Adam Goodheart's The Civil War Awakening on the subject of Southern fear of the Wide Awakes:
The Summer of 1860 was hot and dry, which led to ruinous fires in Southern states such as Texas. Originally, the fires were blamed on natural causes, but before long, the combination of continued fires and the growing influence of the Wide-Awakes led Southern newspapers to a false conclusion. Not long after Lincoln became the Republican nominee in Chicago, Southern newspapers started to claim that the fires were started by African slaves, and those slaves were inspired, and perhaps told/funded to do so by the Wide-Awakes. [As you read, remember the torches on spears these men carried.] A rash of lynchings occurred, especially in Texas, trying to "get to the bottom" of the Abolitionist/Wide-Awake Conspiracy. ...

To most Southerners, especially politicians, the conspiracy of the Wide-Awakes using African slaves to commit arson was taken as Gospel Truth. Southern states accelerated recruiting, training, and equipping their state militias in the Fall of 1860. Southerners had Revolutionary War Spirit as well; their local/state militias viewed themselves as "Minutemen" that needed to be on perpetual alert. In the Border States (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, & Delaware), Wide-Awakes were coming under attack, which led to the Wide-Awakes arming themselves so they could defend themselves in the increasing number of street battles . . .
these street battles actually increased the number of Northern recruits to the Wide-Awakes. ... Southerners, fueled by the belief that Wide-Awakes were behind a conspiracy using African slaves to commit waves of arson, came to view Abraham Lincoln as a threat to their existence, property, and prosperity.
So yes, a cultural/political accelerant of sorts. Historian Avery Craven points out that "The most significant feature of Republican activity was, in fact, a revival of the Old Whig "hurrah" methods of 1840 in which the young Wide-awakes substituted marching in uniforms with torchlights and fence rails and songs and cheers, for sober discussion." (That whole essay is worth reading, as far as your question is concerned. The Richmond Enquirer published an editorial in 1860 that included these passages: "Of the Presidential candidates three are agreed that a State has no right to secede, and on that issue occupy the same platform; and the "Wide Awakes" have their authority for believing that in the event of secession of Alabama or South Carolina it will be not only a pretext but a duty to march into Southern territory. ... As far as Virginia is concerned, the contest will be fought not out of the Union but for States rights and State sovereignty in the Union. She will have to stand between the power of the Central Government and the assertion of sovereign authority by some sister State. Let the first armed invader, whether a Federal minion or an abolition drilled incendiary, who violates the sanctity of her territory, find her citizens not only wide awake, but prepared to meet him.")

A few more odds and ends: The Connecticut Wide Awake Songster, to be performed while wearing the Wide-Awake hat. And the single issue of the Wide Awake Pictorial.

I am not a historian, but found this story interesting for the conflation of paramilitarism and the Republican cause, for the voluntary nature of the groups, for their spread, for their intimidation factor, and for the way that the followers of a candidate amped up the fears surrounding him.
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:44 PM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Wheeling was a...South...city?
posted by tallthinone at 9:56 PM on May 22, 2016


Wheeling was a...South...city?

Wheeling was in Virginia, a southern slave state.
posted by lathrop at 4:58 AM on May 24, 2016


« Older Hiroshima: The New Yorker, 1946   |   A pencil and a dream Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments