Author: Fred Gooltz
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A Civil War Story
The Youth Movement that Remade America. This is the story about the liberal kids who formed an activism club which went viral, elected Lincoln, and started a war. Today, the American electorate and political climate are deeply fractured. The political divisions are typified by a disgust with the political status quo amid a sense of…
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Lincoln’s Caped Crusaders
Introduction This is a true story about a new generation seizing power. Candidate Lincoln saved an odd letter from an orphan who requested money, claiming that he wore out his shoes in his local chapter of the Wide Awakes. Stemming from this scribbled note we begin to question: Who were the Wide Awakes? How did this…
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The Chaotic Roots of American Politics
An Adolescent Nation’s Partisan Divide Explodes. The 19th century saw a raucous political culture characterized by hard cider bribery, polling place brawls, and consequently…very high voter turnout. In cities, armed gangs provided muscle for party bosses. The Bowery Boys, associated with New York’s firefighters and the nativist American Party, marched in intimidating election-eve midnight parades that sometimes ransacked…
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Enter The Republicans
Carried on the Shoulders of America’s Youth Vote. Kentucky Congressman Cassius Clay was famous not only for surviving assassination, but for fighting back and killing his attackers. Despite Clay’s courage, his Party was decimated in 1856. The Republican’s rivals in northeastern cities employed gangs to help win elections. Without a “ground game” like the fire brigades that rallied…
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Hartford’s Beadle Boys
Progressive Christian Soldiers. A Hartford community leader, the Reverend Elias Beadle mentored a generation of lower and middle class boys and girls (including his very politically-active son) in an after-school program at Hartford’s Pearl Street Presbyterian Church. Rev. Beadle succeeded in teaching the kids leadership skills, organizational management, and inspiring the youngsters to live as “good Christian soldiers”…
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The Beadle Boys Muster for Clay
The Accidental Birth of a Movement. Beadle’s former students, a dozen members of The Pearl Street Congregational Church Young Men’s Society volunteered to usher at Cassius Clay’s rally speech. A mix of poor and working-class boys, the Church group existed partly to teach the boys leadership skills and to find respectable employment for the youngsters. In 1860, many…
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The First March
The Accidental Birth of a Movement. The Wide Awakes are born from violence. With details collected from a careful analysis of contradictory versions of the night, we can recreate the dramatic moments that made these boys famous: Our boys’ march as a bodyguard encircling Cassius Clay’s carriage. Holding leaky fireman torches they escort him from the speaker’s hall…
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The First Youth Organizers
Henry Sperry’s Engine for Generational Change. In the days after The Hartford Courant dubs the boys the “Wide Awakes,” they feverishly race to prepare for the 9-week gubernatorial campaign. Based out of the tiny studio apartment of one of the boys, they recruit friends from work and school to join their club. Mostly in their early 20s…
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Lincoln Meets The Wide Awakes
The Wide Awakes are just 30 kids in Hartford when Lincoln arrives in Connecticut to rally voters. As with Rep. Cassius Clay, the boys provide security and earn themselves media coverage. Needing to correspond with the newspaper reporters writing to the boys for comment, 23 year-old aspiring newspaperman Henry Sperry volunteers to lead the club’s communications. Sperry sends…
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A Connecticut Craze
Early Growing Pains. Keen to maximize excitement for the Connecticut Republican Party, Henry T. Sperry and the other Pearl Street Church boys are elated by news of their club’s spread. However, James Chalker grows upset that kids in distant towns are evidently making their own black capes rather than buying from him. Personifying the corrupting influence of…