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The Wide Awakes were a youth organization and later a paramilitary organization cultivated by the Republican Party during the 1860 presidential election in the United States. Using popular social events, an ethos of competitive fraternity, and even promotional comic books, the organization introduced many to political participation and ...
In spring 1860, the kid who took tickets at Hartford’s train station began to receive a flood of letters from Republicans across the North, asking how to start their own Wide Awake companies.
In March of 1860, five young Wide Awakes went to hear Abraham Lincoln speak at Hartford City Hall. He said he opposed slavery and supported workers’ rights to strike. The young men liked what they heard, and after the speech they escorted him by torchlight to the home of Mayor Tom Allyn. The Lincoln campaign team knew a good thing when they saw it.
By energizing the tone of the campaign, the Wide Awakes had a major impact on how Americans interpreted Lincoln’s victory in the days and weeks between election and secession. By the end of 1860, the nation was wide awake. Here the story enters that strange vortex between election and war.
Jun 26, 2024 · During the 1860 presidential campaign, the thousands of young Northerners in the Wide Awake movement organized boisterous, torch-bearing brigades to push back against slavery. But others saw the group as a paramilitary force training to invade the South.
Jul 11, 2020 · Throughout the 1860 election, the Wide Awakes, a novel paramilitary-style organization, held mass rallies, marches, and demonstrations to combat slave power. These “young working-men for Lincoln” successfully combined new media and unrepentant partisanship to mobilize hundreds of thousands against the Southern planter class.
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The Wide Awake Club was a nationwide grassroots paramilitary group that supported Abraham Lincoln’s1860 presidential campaign. The club was founded in Connecticut, and its members were mostly white men in their late teens or early twenties.
