A look into the group instrumental to electing Abraham Lincoln president in 1860. The Wide Awakes were a Republican para-military organization distinguished from other political clubs of the 19th ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The Wide Awakes were a series of clubs of mostly young men in their teens and early twenties, who organized parades throughout ...

Jon Grinspan is curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and author of “Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War.” ...

On June 1, the Libertyville Historical Society launched the “Liberty and Union Campaign to Restore the Wide Awakes Banner,” an ambitious preservation initiative to restore a historic silk banner from ...

A militant youth movement roused the North from political torpor and put it on a war footing, according to this vibrant historical study. Smithsonian historian Grinspan (The Age of Acrimony) ...

I just finished an excellent book titled “Wide Awake’’ by Jon Grinspan about a young man’s movement that helped put Abraham Lincoln in office. James Buchanan was president, so I assume Lancaster was a ...