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 by organizing themselves into an army of Wide Awake companies that then march on the Republican Party’s Convention. It is by design that these young, radical prairie socialists influence the Party’s platform. Radical Republican lawyers and activist newspaper publishers influence the ideology of these western Wide Awake clubs by following Sperry’s lead and writing opinion editorials that provide “talking points” for the cavalcade of rally speakers that stump at all of their “excursions.” With one voice, these mid-western liberals demand specific egalitarian policies. Electorally, the Wide Awake chapters solidify Iowa into a Electoral College firewall for Lincoln. Wide Awake chapters even spread into the heart of Douglas’ base: Missouri – where a company of French Wide Awakes and a whole battalion of German Wide Awake companies turn their respective counties to Lincoln.