Overview

A propulsive account of our history’s most surprising, most consequential political club: the Wide Awake anti-slavery youth movement that marched America from the 1860 election to civil war. At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves the Wide Awakes. Soon, hundreds of thousands of young White and Black men, and a number of women, were organizing boisterous, uniformed, torch-bearing brigades of their own. These Wide Awakes—mostly working-class Americans in their twenties—became one of the largest, most spectacular, and most influential political movements in our history. To some, it demonstrated the power of a rising majority to push back against slavery. To others, it looked like a paramilitary force training to invade the South. Within a year, the nation would be at war with itself, and many on both sides would point to the Wide Awakes as the mechanism that got them there. In this gripping narrative, Smithsonian historian Jon Grinspan examines how exactly our nation crossed the threshold from a political campaign into a war. Perfect for readers of Lincoln on the Verge and The Field of Blood, Wide Awake bears witness to the power of protest, the fight for majority rule, and the defense of free speech. At its core, Wide Awake illuminates a question American democracy keeps posing, about the precarious relationship between violent rhetoric and violent actions.

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9781639730643

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[Grinspan is] a gifted writer . . . The reader is swept along as if in the midst of one of the era’s mass parades. * Eric Foner, The Nation on THE AGE OF ACRIMONY * The Age of Acrimony is that rare disturbance in the waters of the historiography of 19th-century America . . . An engaging, inviting, and ultimately disruptive story. * The Boston Globe * Brisk, edifying . . . Illuminate[s] a half-century of strife and grudging reform. * Minneapolis Star-Tribune on THE AGE OF ACRIMONY *

"""[Grinspan is] a gifted writer . . . The reader is swept along as if in the midst of one of the era's mass parades."" --Eric Foner, The Nation on THE AGE OF ACRIMONY ""The Age of Acrimony is that rare disturbance in the waters of the historiography of 19th-century America . . . An engaging, inviting, and ultimately disruptive story."" --The Boston Globe ""Brisk, edifying . . . Illuminate[s] a half-century of strife and grudging reform."" --Minneapolis Star-Tribune on THE AGE OF ACRIMONY"

Author Information

Jon Grinspan is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He is the author of two books, including The Age of Acrimony. He frequently contributes to the New York Times and has been featured in the New Yorker and the Washington Post, on CBS Sunday Morning, and elsewhere. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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