A Wide Awakes parade in Lower Manhattan, one of a series of political rallies held in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston during the first week of October 1860. (Harpers Weekly, Jim Hoft image)
The Wide Awakes were a Republican group of young men organized to escort and protect Republican speakers during the highly contentious election of 1860. The men would wear uniforms hats and march with lanterns to protect Republican speakers in northern states from unruly political opponents.
The organization of mostly young working-class men did not sit home or cower from the political violence of the day.
The Wide Awakes had chapters in several free Union states including Ohio, New York, Connecticut, Illinois and Iowa, to name a few.
The members escorted Republican speakers, surrounding them and protecting them from the violence of the slave supporters and Democrats. In many cases, rowdies ambushed Wide Awake parades, hurling bricks and screaming, “Kill the damn Wide Awakes.” This is similar to the tactics of the American left today with their Antifa and BLM shock troops with the support of the intelligence agencies.
Oscar Lawrence Jackson, a twenty-year-old who lectured to open-air audiences in rural Ohio, recorded an incident in which drunken Democrats tried to shout down his speech. “It came near taking a serious turn,” Jackson wrote, “as the ‘Wide Awakes’ were prepared and would have shot and sliced them like dogs if any one of us had been struck.”
A young Iowan Wide Awake in full uniform demonstrates for the 1860 Republican candidates Abraham Lincoln (for president), Hannibal Hamlin (for vice president), and Samuel R. Curtis (for congressman). His stern expression reflects the dire, militaristic seriousness that often replaced exuberant hoopla in the Wide Awake ranks. Reprinted from “‘The Prairies A-Blaze’: Iowa Wide-Awakes Carry Torches for Lincoln,” Iowa Heritage Illustrated, 77 (Spring 1996). Courtesy Floyd and Marion Rinhart Collection, The Ohio State University Libraries.