Wide Awakes

Using popular social events, an ethos of competitive fraternity, and even promotional comic books, the organization introduced many to political participation and proclaimed itself as the newfound voice of younger voters.

The structured militant Wide Awakes appealed to a generation which had been profoundly shaken by the partisan instability in the 1850s, and offered young northerners a much-needed political identity.

Adopting the uniform of black capes that such torchbearers wore to protect themselves from dripping oil onto their clothing, local Republicans were spurred by the incident to form the Wide Awakes.

Five store clerks that belonged to the Wide Awakes decided to join a parade for Lincoln, who delighted in the torchlight escort back to his hotel provided for him after his speech.

[4] Members of the Wide Awakes were described by The New York Times as "young men of character and energy, earnest in their Republican convictions and enthusiastic in prosecuting the canvass on which we have entered.

Each party took unusual pains to mobilize its followers in disciplined political clubs, but the most remarkable of these were the Lincoln “Rail Maulers” and “Wide Awakes,” whose organizations extended throughout the state.

Party emulation made every political rally the occasion for carefully arranged parades through banner-bedecked streets, torchlight processions, elaborate floats and transparencies, blaring bands, and fireworks.

The gatherings of the Wide Awakes were very different from all previous American political rallies, which featured boisterous daytime parades, songs, and brass bands.

Many Americans north and south delighted in military uniforms and titles, musters and parades, and the formal balls their companies sponsored during the winter social season.

Their younger brothers no doubt delighted in aping them, so far as $1.33 would allow, while their parents were provided with a means by which youthful rowdyism was, for a time, channeled into a military form of discipline.

Campaign clubs helped to extend and connect the social seasons for single young men and women, and gave both an occasion for high-spirited travel.

“There were frequent ‘three cheers for Miss Nancy Rogers.’ ... Captain Pat Conger was the best looking man on the ground and we can only say that it is a pity he is not a Democrat.”Typical Wide Awakes chapters also adopted an unofficial mission statement.

In 1860, Texas Senator Louis Wigfall alleged that Wide Awakes were behind a wave of arson and vandalism, opposing "one–half million of men uniformed and drilled, and the purpose of their organization to sweep the country in which I live with fire and sword.

Their outfits and equipment only further incited that fear with beliefs that "they parade at midnight, carry rails to break open our doors, torches to fire our dwellings, and beneath their long black capes, the knife to cut our throats.

"[13][14] On October 25, 1858, Senator Seward of New York stated to an excited crowd that "a revolution has begun" and alluded to Wide Awakes as "forces with which to recover back again all the fields... and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the constitution and freedom forever."

It would no longer entertain the "abhorrence of the rapine, murder, insurrection, pollution and incendiarism which have been plotted by the deluded and vicious of the North, against the chastity, law and prosperity of innocent and unoffending citizens of the South.

In this April 1861 incident, Copperhead anti-war Democrats mobilized the National Volunteers to attack the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania state militias as they passed through the city en route to Washington, D.C..[2] After Lincoln called out all the militia in April 1861, the Republican Wide Awakes, the Democratic "Douglas Invincibles," and other parade groups volunteered en masse for the Union army.

In 1864, reports of political rallies noted the "Northwestern Wide Awakes, the Great Western Light Guard Band, and the 24th Illinois Infantry" at a Chicago meeting.

On November 5, the Chicago Union Campaign Committee, the name of Lincoln's party that year, declared: "On Tuesday next the destiny of the American Republic is to be settled.

[19] Aided by Francis Preston Blair Jr. and Army Captain Nathaniel Lyon, the St. Louis Wide Awakes smuggled armaments into the city and trained secretly in a warehouse.

Lyon's Wide Awakes, newly mustered into the Union Army, were used on May 10, 1861, to arrest a division of the Missouri State Militia near St. Louis in what would become known as the Camp Jackson Affair.

Scholars argue that any connection between the Wide Awakes and the provenance of woke as political slang, irrespective of meanings ascribed thereto, remains tenuous.

For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, activists dedicated to "artistic sovereignty" and "liberation" intentionally and explicitly " 'sampled and remixed the Wide Awakes' " as both an idea and social movement.

Black Thought, who helped spearhead these " "remixed' " Wide Awakes, told The New York Times that, "throughout history, it's been the young people and creatives and intellectuals and philosophers and — just the visionaries — who understood the power in uniting, and who contributed to the greatest progress.