Author: Fred Gooltz

A Wide Awake Orion Clemens and Confederate Samuel Langhorne Clemens When Union troops close the Mississippi River to commercial traffic, an unemployed riverboat pilot named Sam Clemens is apprehended by Union soldiers and drafted into service. But Sam had voted for John Bell, a Tennessee slaveholder. On his way to enlistment, Clemens and two other boat pilots…

The largest march in New York City’s history Sidney Gladwin’s Wide Awake chapter in New York returns Sperry’s favor of the Hartford Gala invitation by inviting all of the Connecticut Wide Awakes to New York City’s super-rally. Sperry’s GOTV plan calls for a weekend of coordinated super-rallies in all the major cities of the North. Overwhelming the…

The Wide Awakes put down the draft riots New voters and immigrant laborers flock to the polls in support of Lincoln, who sweeps the free states on his way to a popular vote plurality and an electoral landslide. Eighty percent of the original Hartford Wide Awakes volunteer to serve in the Union Army. In New York, Sidney…

President Lincoln thanks Henry Sperry.  Many newspapers expect the Hartford Wide Awakes to lead Lincoln’s escort to the inauguration. Henry Sperry receives a letter from Abraham Lincoln acknowledging the services of the Wide Awakes during the campaign, but offering regrets. So as to not frighten the South who consider the Wide Awakes a political police force, Lincoln tells…