Wide awake The forgotten force that elected Lincoln and spurred the Civil War

A militant youth movement roused the North from political torpor and put it on a war footing, according to this vibrant historical study. Smithsonian historian Grinspan (The Age of Acrimony) spotlights the Wide Awakes, a Republican political club started in February 1860, by five young clerks in Hartford, Conn., to provide escorts to Republican speakers, including Abraham Lincoln. They adopted the name Wide Awakes to signify vigilance against threats from "the Slave Power," fashioned martial-looking uniforms of black capes and caps, and, as hundreds of thousands of men joined the clubs throughout the North, started practicing military drills, staging immense torchlit parades, and brawling with brick-hurling Democrats. As described in Grinspan's colorful narrative, the Wide Awakes galvanized Republicans, embodying the energy, discipline, and sense of righteousness animating the party. They also, he contends, touched off panic in the South; the specter of the Wide Awakes helped Southern firebrands prod their states into seceding. Grinspan makes the movement the centerpiece of a searching exploration of America's evolving political culture as it polarized, moving from dustups between mobs to more militarized confrontations. He conveys all this in elegant, cinematic prose that captures the sometimes thrilling, sometimes menacing atmospherics of the movement. The result is an insightful and moving analysis of how America descended into civil war. (May)

History of the little-known paramilitary movement that found its leader in Abraham Lincoln. In the 1850s, responding to the xenophobic Know Nothing movement, the Wide Awakes formed. Made up of mostly young men, they "united around a fear that a small minority of enslavers, aided by northern allies, were perverting America's fragile politics." Grinspan, author of The Age of Acrimony, writes that most agreed that the system of slavery involved the silencing of opposition by violence--and in that sense, his book is timely indeed. It was that militarism that proved especially problematic, for as the Wide Awake movement grew to number perhaps 500,000 men across the North, its uniformed parades suggested legitimate armies, and that image suggested to Southerners that war was afoot. This was especially true when young Black men formed units and marched alongside white citizens in places like Boston and Philadelphia. In all events, finding supporters in such prominent men as Carl Schurz, the German immigrant who would soon become a general in the Union army, the movement amalgamated recent immigrants with radical Republicans and other elements. As Grinspan notes, tellingly, while half of eligible men served in the Union forces during the Civil War, almost every Wide Awake did. Not all served with distinction or heroically ("even Carl Schurz…fought a mediocre war"), but they all showed up. A few did gain distinction: James Sank Brisbin, for instance, fought valiantly as a cavalryman throughout the war, rising to the rank of general. Virtually all, notes the author, supported Lincoln, showing up in Springfield, Illinois, before the 1860 election for a mass parade that put Lincoln in a bit of a bind, inasmuch as he was seeking some sort of reconciliation with the rebellious South. A welcome study of an overlooked aspect of the Civil War and the events leading up to it. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.