How the city hardened the country boy
Sidney Gladwin, one of the Pearl Street Church boys from the Wide Awakes’ first march with Rep Cassius Clay returns to Connecticut from his new home in New York City with news: He had just started a Wide Awake chapter in New York City with the help of an Irish immigrant organizer named Francis Lambert. Sidney spends the final week of the Connecticut State House race helping his friends. Sidney’s work includes helping his brother’s no-chance campaign for County Sheriff against a racist Democrat in southeastern Connecticut. In defiance of the conservative advisors surrounding the Republican gubernatorial candidate, the radical protosuffragist “Women of Hartford” group travels south with the Hartford Wide Awakes to the coast of the Long Island Sound for a Republican rally. Sadly, tragedy strikes the Wide Awakes in New Haven.