Wide Awake

<p><b>A propulsive account of our history’s most surprising, most consequential political club: the Wide Awake anti-slavery youth movement that marched America from the 1860 election to civil war.</b><br><br>At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves the Wide Awakes. Soon, hundreds of thousands of young White and Black men, and a number of women, were organizing boisterous, uniformed, torch-bearing brigades of their own. These Wide Awakes—mostly working-class Americans in their twenties—became one of the largest, most spectacular, and most influential political movements in our history. To some, it demonstrated the power of a rising majority to push back against slavery. To others, it looked like a paramilitary force training to invade the South. Within a year, the nation would be at war with itself, and many on both sides would point to the Wide Awakes as the mechanism that got them there.<br><br>In this gripping narrative, Smithsonian historian Jon Grinspan examines how exactly our nation crossed the threshold from a political campaign into a war. Perfect for readers of <i>Lincoln on the Verge </i>and <i>The</i> <i>Field of Blood</i>, <i>Wide Awake </i>bears witness to the power of protest, the fight for majority rule, and the defense of free speech. At its core, <i>Wide Awake</i> illuminates a question American democracy keeps posing, about the precarious relationship between violent rhetoric and violent actions.</p>