The Wide Awakes were a uniformed political movement organized in clubs in many northern cities to support the Republican Party in the 1860 election. The first chapter had been founded that spring in Hartford, Connecticut and their uniform of cape, cap, and torch was widely adopted. The clubs from the Albany, New York area met in a typical mass evening parade with a reported four thousand men marching through the streets with lit torches and bearing their single eye banner. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
"Demonstration of the Wide Awakes in Albany," New York Times, September 12, 1860.
John Bach McMaster, A History of the People of the United States, from the revolution to the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1921), 8: 459.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Campaigns/Elections