WIDE AWAKE

History of the little-known paramilitary movement that found its leader in Abraham Lincoln.

In the 1850s, responding to the xenophobic Know Nothing movement, the Wide Awakes formed. Made up of mostly young men, they “united around a fear that a small minority of enslavers, aided by northern allies, were perverting America’s fragile politics.” Grinspan, author of The Age of Acrimony, writes that most agreed that the system of slavery involved the silencing of opposition by violence—and in that sense, his book is timely indeed. It was that militarism that proved especially problematic, for as the Wide Awake movement grew to number perhaps 500,000 men across the North, its uniformed parades suggested legitimate armies, and that image suggested to Southerners that war was afoot. This was especially true when young Black men formed units and marched alongside white citizens in places like Boston and Philadelphia. In all events, finding supporters in such prominent men as Carl Schurz, the German immigrant who would soon become a general in the Union army, the movement amalgamated recent immigrants with radical Republicans and other elements. As Grinspan notes, tellingly, while half of eligible men served in the Union forces during the Civil War, almost every Wide Awake did. Not all served with distinction or heroically (“even Carl Schurz…fought a mediocre war”), but they all showed up. A few did gain distinction: James Sank Brisbin, for instance, fought valiantly as a cavalryman throughout the war, rising to the rank of general. Virtually all, notes the author, supported Lincoln, showing up in Springfield, Illinois, before the 1860 election for a mass parade that put Lincoln in a bit of a bind, inasmuch as he was seeking some sort of reconciliation with the rebellious South.

A welcome study of an overlooked aspect of the Civil War and the events leading up to it.