Author: Fred Gooltz

The Irish & German & French Vote Sperry wants The Wide Awakes to spread into swing districts – the specific towns and regions that always prove vital to winning each State. The Connecticut gubernatorial race proves the efficacy of his “excursions,” intercity joint parades, as a way to goose membership in the host town. Following Sperry’s orders,…

Harriet Tubman’s Presence in Troy Buoyed by the Republican victory in Connecticut, a Massachusetts anti-slavery coalition announces a convention and invites Harriet Tubman to attend. On her way there in late April, she stops in Troy, New York just as a mob of angry liberals begins to form around a jail. Inside, a captured runaway slave is…

A multimedia phenomenon captures American pop culture The Wide Awakes become a cultural phenomenon. It is not only scrappy organizers who spread Wide Awake chapters, it is also America’s top entertainers who write and perform political anthems which many Wide Awake chapters sing at rallies and their own nighttime parades. Before radio, audiences learned popular tunes thanks to…

Prairie Socialism and the Wide Awakes.  Poor farmers in the frontier west simply cannot compete with slave labor, they want a political party that will directly pay them in case of crop failures, they want guaranteed homes for the homeless, and they want price controls. These prairie socialists forge the Republican Party’s policies on key economic issues…

Charles Francis Adams Jr. betrays his legacy Charles Francis Adams Jr, the great-grandson of founding father John Adams, is a 25 year-old Congressional aide during the election of 1860. In defiance of his family dynasty’s legacy of moderate conservatism, young aristocratic Charlie changes his life on a journey to the hardscrabble western states while assisting a family friend’s…

The Republicans: warriors for science and progress Many orators tour the same speaking circuit that Charles Francis Adams’ boss traveled. Some of these rally speakers are local young men who use the Wide Awake movement to springboard themselves into political careers. In Ohio, a young adjunct college professor known by his students as Jimmy Garfield emerges from Wide…

The Wide Awakes Gear Up for Three More Governors Races The Wide Awake’s gubernatorial victory celebration is on their terms: They defy the sexists and welcome the radical Women of Hartford Club to host their Grand Ball and speak and introduce program portions. The 10,000 members vote to end Chalker’s power to sell “official” merchandise, instead, they…

Giant Multi-state “Exchanges” Unite the North The Governor’s race in Connecticut was merely the first of a wave of summertime State House elections before the November Presidential. That summer, there are gubernatorial elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. To mobilize all of the young people in these 3 states, Sperry’s idea of intercity excursions is built to…

The Wide Awakes Terrify The South Runaway bestseller Uncle Tom’s Cabin had already turned much of America’s literate pop-culture consumers against the slave power oligarchy. But during the summer of the Wide Awakes, Southerners who did not read fiction watch helplessly as popular music turns to the cause of abolition. Southern newspapers track the growth of the Wide…

The Wide Awakes fight a Civil War skirmish Missouri’s German Wide Awakes compete in dueling parades with rival clubs of Democrat John Bell’s “Bell-Ringers”, and Douglass’ “Chloroformers” and “Minute Men.” The antagonism builds in intensity from the summertime parades trading insults, to ostentatious tit-for-tat public displays of firearms, to shots fired. On Lincoln’s inauguration day,…