Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War

A militant youth movement roused the North from political torpor and put it on a war footing, according to this vibrant historical study. Smithsonian historian Grinspan (The Age of Acrimony) spotlights the Wide Awakes, a Republican political club started in February 1860, by five young clerks in Hartford, Conn., to provide escorts to Republican speakers, including Abraham Lincoln. They adopted the name Wide Awakes to signify vigilance against threats from “the Slave Power,” fashioned martial-looking uniforms of black capes and caps, and, as hundreds of thousands of men joined the clubs throughout the North, started practicing military drills, staging immense torchlit parades, and brawling with brick-hurling Democrats. As described in Grinspan’s colorful narrative, the Wide Awakes galvanized Republicans, embodying the energy, discipline, and sense of righteousness animating the party. They also, he contends, touched off panic in the South; the specter of the Wide Awakes helped Southern firebrands prod their states into seceding. Grinspan makes the movement the centerpiece of a searching exploration of America’s evolving political culture as it polarized, moving from dustups between mobs to more militarized confrontations. He conveys all this in elegant, cinematic prose that captures the sometimes thrilling, sometimes menacing atmospherics of the movement. The result is an insightful and moving analysis of how America descended into civil war. (May)