Wide Awake with Jon Grinspan

December 03, 2024
12:00pm - 1:00pm

At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners (many of whom roamed the streets of Wheeling, Virginia) 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. Smithsonian historian Jon Grinspan will discuss his new book, Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War.