You’ve heard it before: we are living in divided times. Disagreement is part of being a citizen of a democracy, but in today's indisputably hot political climate, young people have stepped up into serious leadership roles. The recent advocacy work of David Hogg, Jerome Foster II, and Greta Thurnberg are just a few examples. Young people have always been key players in American history, using their voices to shape politics and bring conversations about their future into the mainstream. Even during the Civil War — our country’s most divided and unjust period — the nation looked to youth to set the tone for a new future. None other than Abraham Lincoln owed his 1860 election to this kind of movement. New research is proving that youth activism played a critical role in the form of an organized movement who called themselves the Wide Awakes.
The Wide Awakes were a series of clubs of mostly young men in their teens and early twenties, who organized parades throughout Northern towns and cities in support of anti-slavery candidates such as Abraham Lincoln. In addition to wearing flamboyant uniforms, coordinating cheers, and participating in military-style marches, they adopted a powerful symbol: a single eye, wide awake to the danger slavery posed to the nation’s survival.
A sleeping nation
The Wide Awakes did not just march for show; they embodied the very real struggles dividing the United States in 1860. Over the previous several decades, white politicians — from the North and South — had been grappling with the “peculiar institution,” a euphemistic phrase for slavery. As the United States expanded into Indigenous land, debates constantly arose about whether new states would allow or bar slavery. Congress brokered one compromise after another when states from Missouri to California joined the Union. The more the nation compromised for the sake of peace, the more abolition seemed like a distant dream.
The shadowy, pro-slavery politicians who held the United States hostage in the name of expanding slavery’s influence became known as “Slave Power.” And by 1860, the Slave Power cast a shadow over politics, the economy, and society. Through the 1830s and 1840s, a pro-slavery majority in the House of Representatives banned the discussion of abolitionist petitions, which clearly violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of petition. Pro-slavery politicians also repeatedly threatened secession at even the mention of slavery’s abolition.
By the 1850s, the issue was exploding into violence in the streets and even in the halls of government itself. Pro-slavery mobs throughout the country often attacked abolitionist writers and speakers, sometimes requiring these thought leaders to flee public events and even their homes. Most infamously, in 1856, South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks brutally assaulted Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber after Sumner delivered a fiery anti-slavery speech. Blood was being spilled in the halls of government where Americans were supposed to settle their differences peacefully. Proud of their use of violence as a political tool, a Georgia congressman boldly declared, “I have no objection to the liberty of speech, when the liberty of the cudgel is left free to combat it.”
Nobody had their eyes on this threat more than a rising generation of young people, who felt their futures were being stolen by a tiny minority who trampled on American values to stay rich. But many Americans saw the 1860 election as an opportunity to turn the tide against Slave Power. Because the North vastly outpopulated the South, Northerners could create change — but only if they could be convinced of Slave Power’s danger and their own power to fight it at the polls.
Moving the masses
Mass movements often tap into widespread, shared feelings that match the energy of the moment. This is exactly what the Wide Awakes accomplished. The first Wide Awake club started in Connecticut among a few friends tired of watching pro-slavery gangs run rampant. When the club’s chosen candidate for Connecticut governor, Cassius Clay, was visiting Hartford, Wide Awake members escorted Clay to his hotel carrying kerosene torches and wearing military style uniforms. One member — who would go on to become a famous designer — stitched together a few capes to make them stick out in the crowd and look tough. When the usual bullies showed up and shouted insults at Clay, these first Wide Awakes kept them away. Just a few days later, this initial Wide Awake club stood guard for Abraham Lincoln himself.
News of this club spread quickly through the state of Connecticut in the spring of 1860. By the time Lincoln was chosen as a presidential candidate in May, Wide Awake clubs were organizing in almost every city and town in the North. These clubs especially attracted young men in their late teens and twenties. Fed up with “business as usual” politics that allowed Southern politicians to perpetuate unchecked violence, the parades they organized brought out eager crowds of men and women, young and old, to cheer them on.
The Wide Awakes publicly marched against the chaos and political violence of their times with order, reason, and a readiness to defend themselves with force if necessary. In previous elections, street brawls often broke out, keeping people cynical about the political process, but the Wide Awakes’ orderly marches and trademark military style kept the violence away. Word of their dramatic torchlight parades, strange black capes, and youthful swagger spread throughout the nation. So too did the enthusiasm they inspired. As one speaker shouted to a crowd, “how long must the South kick us, before we shall all be Wide Awake?”
In the process, the Wide Awakes generated enthusiasm for Lincoln’s election. While some critics dismissed the Wide Awakes as all show and no substance, their influence was palpable. Wide Awake clubs used spectacle to create excitement and get out the vote. There was something magical about the sight of hundreds, even thousands, of torches marching under a night sky as bands blared and crowds of men and women, young and old, cheered them on. A friend of Lincoln’s even called them “the most soul-inspiring organization the country had ever seen.” Taking part in a Wide Awake parade, or even just supporting one, made people feel connected to a common cause — like they were part of a community.
Those feelings of connection successfully swung voters who were on the fence. One wealthy New Yorker admitted to his diary that he was not a big fan of Lincoln, but there was something about these Wide Awake fellows that convinced him: “I’ve nearly made up my mind to deposit a lukewarm Republican vote next month,” he told his diary during the run-up to election day. In the end, he did vote for Lincoln.
This sense of belonging inspired by the Wide Awakes even activated women who were otherwise excluded from the political mainstream. The violent toxic masculinity of politics in previous years had deterred women from openly getting involved, but the Wide Awakes cleared the streets for them to join the cause. Part of the Wide Awakes’ power was their ability to offer even disenfranchised groups multiple ways to feel like they were contributing to a history-defining event.
An imperfect movement
Still, important voices were missing from the movement — most notably, Black voices. Despite the Wide Awakes’ stance against slavery's expansion, Black Americans — even those in the North — were largely shut out. An exception was a single Black Wide Awake club in Boston, but overall, the movement prioritized white interests, including fear of competition for jobs and land in the West.
This purposeful exclusion reflected the broader reality that mainstream anti-slavery efforts in 1860 were steeped in white supremacy, concerned more with preserving white opportunities than with true justice. Before he acquired his reputation for bold, decisive action against slavery during his presidency, Lincoln himself was a moderate on the issue during his 1860 campaign. This exclusion reflects the limitations of both the Wide Awake movement and the mainstream society it wanted to mobilize.
But the Wide Awakes’ did earn their place in history by successfully convincing Northern towns and cities that Lincoln had a real shot at victory, a belief that ultimately played a crucial role in the election’s outcome. They mobilized Northerners who had an indifferent attitude towards the issue of slavery in previous elections. Their efforts led to one of the highest voter turnouts in U.S. history, with a staggering 82% of eligible voters casting their ballots in 1860. On election day itself, the Wide Awake clubs helped elect Lincoln by passing out ballots, going door-to-door to help convince undecided voters, and escorting voters to polling places.
This enthusiasm trickled down into even the most oppressed sectors of the South. Enslaved people across the region understood the stakes even if they were denied newspapers and political participation. Word spread across Southern plantations, cities, and small farms of the opposition growing against the Slave Power. Enslaved people might have even caught word of the parades that were finally waking up the North to the dangers slavery posed to the nation’s survival. They understood the nervous whispers of their white enslavers and the angry outbursts against Lincoln and the Wide Awakes. Although the Wide Awake movement was imperfect, people everywhere understood it as a turning point in American history.
Fearful of the Wide Awakes’ military-style parades and willingness to fight, Slave Power politicians began planning separation from the Union before the elections even took place. Within just a few weeks of election day, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the United States. Over the next few months, 10 more states followed South Carolina out of the Union, all of them citing a defense of slavery as their main cause. The Civil War that followed the south’s secession proved Lincoln’s prophetic words that the United States could not endure “half slave and half free.”
While the Wide Awakes were successful in electing their candidate, they did not face the truths of slavery and the real effects it had on Black Americans, especially because Black voices were excluded from the movement. Unaware of the Civil War’s devastation that lay ahead, white Northerners tried to confine the brutal realities of racism to the South, away from a bright future that they believed only belonged to torch-bearing, white, male Wide Awakes. Once Lincoln was elected and the Civil War began, however, they did begin to learn the real stakes. Many of the first soldiers to fight and die in the Union army against Slave Power were those same eager young men of the Wide Awake clubs in 1860. For the enslaved and formerly enslaved, the war presented an unprecedented opportunity to assert their citizenship and begin dismantling the legacies of slavery.
The Wide Awakes helped set these changes in motion, but the work of destroying the long-term effects of slavery and Slave Power’s hold on American life remains unfinished. Their story reminds us that young people have always had the power to shape their futures.
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