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

Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians * Winner of the Lincoln Forum Book Prize * Finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize

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.

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.

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 Lincoln on the Verge and TheField of Blood, Wide Awake bears witness to the power of protest, the fight for majority rule, and the defense of free speech. At its core, Wide Awake illuminates a question American democracy keeps posing, about the precarious relationship between violent speech and violent actions.

Author: Jon Grinspan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 05/14/2024
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.47lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.49w x 1.15d
ISBN: 9781639730643


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2023 pg. 16
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2024
Booklist 05/15/2024 pg. 8
Publishers Weekly 06/17/2024

About the Author
Jon Grinspan is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He is the author of two other books, The Age of Acrimony and The Virgin Vote, frequently contributes to the New York Times, and has been featured in the New Yorker and the Washington Post and on CBS Sunday Morning. At the Smithsonian, he collects objects from historic and contemporary politics-attending elections, conventions, and protests-to help tell the material story of our democracy to present and future Americans. He lives in Washington, D.C.