[ Clock chiming ] ♪♪ -This is the story of how a small group of young, politically inspired northern nobodies launched a nationwide movement that just may have helped rewrite American history.

-Forward!

Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah.

Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah.

-The young people are telling the older people, "Look, it's time to be more decisive and bold."

-These are gonna be the largest gatherings most Americans ever see.

-They prepared people for this image of young men marching in the streets, taking a stand against the slave power.

-God!

We're not going home!

[ Crowd cheers ] -With their military-style uniforms, lit torches and brass knuckles, this was a movement ready to do whatever it took to fulfill their mission.

Get Abraham Lincoln into the White House and put a stop to the spread of slavery once and for all.

-Yellow-bellied abolitionist trash!

♪♪ [ Marching footsteps ] [ Clock chiming ] -Natural theology will prove -- It is -- that slavery is wrong.

-Lincoln was really a very little-known American politician.

♪♪ -The one-term congressman from a Western state.

-[ Grumbling ] -He's from a part of the country that a lot of people weren't really used to taking seriously politically.

-A lot of people don't see him for the intellectual and political leader he would become.

-The great task at hand was a clearing away of excess temper.

-He's a man of deep nuance, great intellectual depth and really shrewd.

-We believe it to be wrong.

They believe it to be right.

-As another presidential election year begins, Lincoln prepares to launch himself back into the political spotlight.

His immediate challenges are to earn the respect of the East Coast power players and to find his way through the increasingly contentious issue of slavery.

[ Bird cawing ] [ Man yelling indistinctly ] [ Horse neighing ] -The institution of slavery exists for almost 250 years by the time we get to 1860.

It wasn't even close to fading away.

In fact, the Southern states -- their wealth, and their output -- made it the sixth largest economy in the world.

-The slavery issue divided the United States like no other issue ever has.

-Abolition hasn't been a successful political movement.

The idea of electing abolitionist leaders is really still very far off.

-But the idea of limiting slavery has begun to gain traction.

-So the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are kind of moving in opposite directions, really splitting over the question of slavery.

The Democratic Party is the older, bigger, legacy party.

The Republican Party is this new party with momentum that's promoting all sorts of new ideas.

They want to stop the expansion of slavery.

-As the Republican Party emerges, they are branded as the radical Republicans.

-[ Yelling indistinctly] -There was a sense that decades and decades of attempts to compromise had failed.

Americans were arming, increasingly ready to militarize in both the North and the South.

[ March plays, indistinct yelling ] -Across America, men are joining political and military clubs to drill and to socialize.

And with the rising popularity of these manly pursuits, the fashion of the day calls for some of the most elaborate facial hair the nation had ever seen.

Even Abraham Lincoln would grow a beard later that year.

As the election of 1860 gets underway, the situation seems ripe for another revolutionary moment.

[ Gunshot ] [ Bell ringing ] In Hartford, Connecticut, a group of small-time merchants and laborers enters the scene.

-Afternoon.

You men Republicans?

-Yeah.

Why?

-Henry Sperry is just 23 years old.

-Cassius Clay is speaking tonight.

-He's never voted in a presidential election before.

-Guaranteed to entertain and elucidate.

Could use our support.

You're welcome to bring your wife.

We need as many Republicans there as possible.

He is a fiery orator.

-By the 1850s, American cities like Hartford had become magnets for young men too restless to stay down on the farm.

They were really kind of charged up by each other, kind of ready to rumble in a way.

-Democrats may have been strong in this corner of New England.

But Republicans, armed with their anti-slavery message, were eager to fight for that turf.

And fight they did.

-Hey, you!

Is this your doing?

-Yes.

-I'll see you tonight.

-Deal with this a lot?

-Yes, yes, we do.

-So, in February 1860, this speaker, Cassius Clay, comes to Hartford.

He's an abolitionist speaker and a very confrontational figure.

-A crowd of 1,500 gathers to hear Clay speak.

-Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this one... -Among them a group of young men carrying torches and dressed in matching black oil-cloth capes.

-City of Hartford, Mr. Clay will begin his speech at 7:00.

♪♪ -Clay!

-How are you, sir?

-Clay!

Clay!

Your ideas are fantasy, sir!

You can't abolish slavery.

It's in the Constitution.

-What do you know?

-Go home, find something better to do with your time.

-Sir, sir, you do not have a platform here.

[ Crowd yells ] -There's a scuffle when some Democrats try to shut down the event, and James Chalker uses his torch to clobber one of the Democrats to defend Cassius Clay.

-Chalker and his torch-wielding comrades had delivered a strong message, and they weren't done yet.

-Then they really start to build on this one night.

-Do you mind telling us a little bit about what you do here?

-Absolutely.

-They get a headquarters above a drugstore.

They start to build really a movement out of what was one isolated incident.

-Complete abolition of slavery.

-And they give themselves a name -- the Wide Awakes... -Which is why I nominate... -...and elect James Chalker to be their first captain.

-Mr. James Chalker.

Sir.

[ Applause ] Do I have a second for the nomination?

-I second that.

-Thank you.

Thank you.

-And they give themselves uniforms and capes.

They go elect the ranks for their leaders, and they start to build, really, a movement out of what was one isolated incident.

One of the things the Wide Awakes really popularize is a torchlit march.

You could smell the turpentine and the coal oil from far away.

You could see the lights shimmering on their uniforms.

This is a really striking iconic movement.

And it becomes the style of American political demonstrations.

Everybody saw this Wide Awake movement and wanted to borrow it and make it their own.

-Look at that.

Isn't that beautiful?

-Really, their style was part of their message.

-Every man with a cap, a cape and a torch.

-I wanted to mention something... -This sort of military fashion was really stating that they were ready, in a sense, to go to war.

-Keep the torch straight.

-Represent yourselves.

-Shoulders back.

There you go.

-That's a right-looking man.

-Just nine days later, they'd come out in force again... -Have you all heard?

Mr. Lincoln's gonna... -...to welcome another controversial speaker to their city.

-Let me see this.

How many men do we have?

-Around 20 or 30.

-Well, well, which is it?

20 or 30?

-I'd say 30.

-I need you to get all the men.

Bother their wives... -We need all our men here tonight.

We're drilling tonight.

Go get them.

-Right.

-Go on.

-Thank you.

Thank you so much.

-...conflict.

The proposition that we at the North view slavery as a wrong.

-It's eight months until the election.

And Abraham Lincoln has arrived in New York City to deliver his now-legendary Cooper Union address.

-...have faith that right makes might.

Let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

-The Cooper Union address really expressed a new position in American politics.

It was anti-slavery, but it was not radical.

-We can afford to let it alone where it now exists.

-And Lincoln takes a moderate ground, but what he really pushes the Republican Party to do is to focus on the issue of Western territory, containing slavery where it exists.

-We cannot afford to extend it into free territory.

-He wasn't calling for the abolition of slavery yet.

But he did draw a line in the sand, saying that slavery should not spread any further beyond the existing slave states.

-Here was somebody who would take a stand against the slave power.

-His speech creates a sensation.

Lincoln's words also make great copy.

-There's something like 4,000 newspapers in America, and they're filled with political news.

-"Tribune"... -Suddenly, Americans were plugged into politics and current events in a way that they had never been before.

-But even in this media-saturated environment, two New York-based editors tower above the rest.

The next day, Horrace Greeley of the pro-Republican "New-York Tribune" reports... -"Mr. Lincoln is one of Nature's orators.

No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."

-More esteemed words from Lincoln.

-Even Greeley's crosstown rival, James Gordon Bennett, of the conservative "New York Herald" prints Abraham Lincoln's speech in full... -"...is that slavery is morally wrong."

Lincoln is our moral compass.

-...with commentary.

-Apparently quick in his perceptions.

-Add that he is dark complexioned.

-Thin man, dark complexioned and apparently quick in his perceptions.

-Good, good.

Yes.

-You were really at the mercy of these newspaper editors.

-They are very aggressive and kind of, um, sarcastic, and they're always going at each other.

-And once something ran in the "Herald" or the "Tribune" or another one of the big-city papers, it would be picked up in papers all over the country.

-The media buzz surrounding his Cooper Union address vaults Lincoln into presidential consideration.

He's winning over the party elites.

After Cooper Union, he's invited to speak in 11 additional cities, including Hartford, where he is met by another rising force... ...James Chalker and his band of Wide Awakes.

♪♪ In less than two weeks' time, the Wide Awakes had come together and thrown themselves into the political moment and into the middle of the national fight against slavery.

♪♪ Their emblem -- an all-seeing eye -- adds a menacing look to their ensemble.

-Good to meet you, Mr. Mayor.

-Amazing speech.

♪♪ [ Menacing music playing ] [ Crowd yelling indistinctly ] -Political violence was nothing new in America.

There had been street brawls over presidential campaigns for decades that sometimes ended in fatalities.

-Go!

[ Yells indistinctly ] -That brawling atmosphere even spread into the U.S. Capitol.

-There were revolvers brandished on the floor of the House of Representatives.

There were mysterious attacks against members of Congress.

Politics seemed to be falling apart.

And Americans were starting to fear for the survival of their country.

♪♪ Throughout America's existence, there had been a fear of disunion over slavery, that the Southern states might split off.

That if they felt too pushed by the growing abolition movement, they might possibly instigate a war.

-[ Yelling indistinctly ] -It had really been one moment of appeasement of the slave power after another.

-There's a lot of people in the North who feel like it's time to stand up for their rights that are being trampled upon by the slave power conspiracy.

-If the Republicans could harness the energy of the Wide Awakes... -Form up in the market.

-...they just might have the voice and the muscle to challenge the slave power... -30 minutes.

-...and defeat the Democrats.

-Forward.

March.

-Around the Northeast, the Wide Awakes are quickly growing their numbers into the hundreds, and then the thousands.

And that spring, when their candidate wins the race for governor in Connecticut, their influence begins to grow as well.

-This governor's race in Connecticut in the spring becomes kind of a bellwether for the whole country.

And the fact that the Wide Awakes are emerging in Connecticut kind of tells the whole nation where they think politics is going.

-Word of the Wide Awakes crisscrosses the Northeast on telegraph wires and gets picked up by local papers large and small.

For James Chalker and his associate, Henry Sperry, it would be a preview of what was to come.

-James Chalker is a textile merchant and is sending Wide Awake uniforms around the country.

-Oh, here we go.

Alright.

-And Henry Sperry is sending out literature.

-[ Speaks indistinctly ] -This is how you build a company.

This is how you elect leaders.

This is how you campaign.

-We now have 1,000.

-Okay.

-And they're guys in their 20s.

One of them never voted before.

They're really driving a national political campaign, one of the most important in American history, and they've never done any of this before in their lives.

-With Wide Awake membership comes status, a social life, but most importantly, a purpose -- a purpose that will find its expression in the May 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

-How many of these do we have coming?

-This would be the Wide Awake's grand coming-out party.

-Think we can get 10,000?

-It's a little ambitious, but I think we can give it a try.

-It's definitely achievable.

with the material... [ Bell ringing ] -Chicago, Illinois.

Delegates and reporters from around the country have begun pouring into the Wigwam, a new arena built for the hotly anticipated convention.

In an era before state-run primaries and caucuses, this is the setting where the party's nominee will be selected.

Most pundits predict one of the party heavyweights, like New York's William Seward, will walk away with the prize.

Instead, what emerges from the Wigwam is one of America's greatest political underdog stories.

[ Crowd chanting "Lincoln" ] -The other candidates coming up for the nomination in May 1860 are political celebrities who've been known for decades.

Lincoln really isn't on the same level at the time.

-He wasn't from a political dynasty.

-That's how they play in New Jersey.

-You know, he was this gawky, odd person from Illinois.

-Hey, hey!

-He had this particular appeal as being somebody who represented rural values in America.

-While all of this excitement fills Chicago, Lincoln remains 200 miles away in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois.

He's detached from the action, but very much engaged.

-In those days, it was not normal for a candidate to be at a convention.

Lincoln sent many friends and emissaries to go work at the convention for him, and he was waiting around as telegrams came in, giving him word in terms of what was happening at the convention itself.

[ [ Telegraph machine clicking ] -Take this to him.

♪♪ -Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Lincoln!

Message from the telegraph office, sir.

♪♪ -After three rounds of voting, Lincoln wins the nomination.

-Thank you.

-Sir.

-It's a stunning victory.

The big newspapers are quick to make their own judgments.

Time would tell if the Republicans' gamble would pay off.

-People often talk about what happens inside the Wigwam.

But what's going on in the streets of Chicago outside, I think, is even more exciting.

[ Indistinct yelling ] -It was one of the most raucous political conventions in American history.

And the Wide Awakes had a role in that.

-There are these mass demonstrations of Wide Awakes marching through the streets with torches at night.

It's thrilling.

And people who see the Wide Awakes in Chicago start up their own company.

-Coming out of Chicago, the Wide Awake movement begins to spread from coast to coast.

Its members are mostly white males, but some African American clubs are reported as well.

They're publishing song books, political pamphlets, even comic books to help young Wide Awakes navigate the sometimes rocky road of political activism.

An obscure letter between two of Lincoln's confidants even connects his own son Robert to a club in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

♪♪ But Lincoln keeps his distance.

He understands how provocative the Wide Awake movement might appear to the South.

However, members of Lincoln's inner circle quickly recognize their potential.

-When you are able to get young people excited about politics, it's always an asset, and to waste that asset is a huge mistake.

-I want you to meet a couple of my associates here.

-Key to the support of this young demographic will be Lincoln's approach to the subject of slavery.

-So, even in the North, there's a lot of anxiety about the idea of abolishing slavery.

-There were abolitionists who were absolute white supremacists.

They could be abolitionists because they just find that it is contradictory to free white labor of being able to have competitive wages for the work that they're doing.

-There's also this fear among Northern working-class people about freed slaves coming up and taking jobs that people are already competing for.

-The idea of there's this nuance within these things, I think is important for folks to understand.

-Lincoln and his party settle on a compromise position.

They don't promise to end slavery.

They promise to end the expansion of slavery into new territories, not just to limit the political power of the slave states, but also to prevent large swaths of good land from falling into the hands of wealthy plantation owners.

Instead, they propose that that land be made available to young, small-time pioneers.

They call the policy Free Soil, which speaks to the ambitions of the restless Wide Awake generation.

-For younger people, the primary issue is, "Am I gonna have economic opportunity to build and to settle and have a place where I have a fair shake?"

Those are their big issues.

♪♪ -As spring turns to summer, late-night Wide Awake marches become a fixture across the country.

-We now officially have clubs all across the United States.

-All across the U.S. -San Francisco.

-So Chalker and Sperry, they're organizing a national movement.

-Can you imagine Texas as a Republican stronghold?

-It's a shock.

-They're doing more to run the campaign for the election of Abraham Lincoln than nearly anyone else in the country.

-"Let every noble freeman on the soil of Uncle Sam now put his shoulder to the wheel and work for Abraham."

-These are really titanic political gatherings.

Suddenly, there are thousands and tens of thousands of people in uniform marching through your town at night.

-[ Men chanting indistinctly ] -But while Northern Republican-leading papers provide a safe space for Lincoln and the Wide Awakes, Democrat-leaning papers, like James Gordon Bennett's "New York Herald," grow more aggressive.

-Lincoln is an abolitionist of reddest dye.

He is an illiterate Western bore.

[ Wind blowing ] -[ Yelling indistinctly ] -In the South, the press reports turn increasingly vulgar and paranoid.

And in the summer of 1860, in Dallas, Texas, they would trigger a stunning wave of violence.

-[ Fire crackling ] -There is a series of fires that are blamed by some Texans on slaves and by some Texans on the Wide Awake.

[ Glass shatters ] The idea that there's a conspiracy coming to the South to set fires and undermine the slave system in Texas.

-There was a series of terrible lynchings that summer.

Dozens of African Americans and dozens of white Northerners who were seen as potential anti-slavery agents were killed, tortured in awful ways.

-As these stories of Wide Awake conspiracies and phantom uprisings are published across the South, white Southern anxiety grows more and more acute.

They begin to form their own paramilitary units and marching clubs, countering what they fear is happening with the Wide Awakes in the North.

♪♪ ♪♪ As was tradition at the time, Lincoln, the candidate, remains home in Springfield, continuing his so-called front-porch campaign.

-"He was large of his age and had an axe put into his hands almost at once."

-He begins writing a short autobiography for the Chicago press and "Tribune" much like presidential candidates do today.

-Pretty good.

-Lincoln was great at sort of self-mythologizing, at quietly puffing up this image of him as a raw Western outsider... -Tell me what you think of this.

"His parents are both born in Virginia."

-...a kind of a rough, earthy, backwoods humor.

-Were there any other great men that were born in Springfield?

I said, "Sir, all we ever get here are little babies."

-[ Laughs ] -He didn't think it was very funny.

That was Henry Villard, and he has a good sense of humor.

-Lincoln's personality was coming out there in front of the American people just as much as his politics.

-While he may be holed up in Springfield to avoid the masses, the masses are coming to him.

-This is Lincoln's house in Springfield, Illinois.

This is a mass gathering or rally at which Lincoln spoke.

It was one of the rare moments at which Lincoln spoke during the campaign.

And you can see interspersed throughout this crowd of gatherers and well-wishers and Republicans, you can see people in Wide Awake uniforms or what appear to be Wide Awake uniforms, wearing the hats and the capes mixed in with everyone else.

-While the uniformed Wide Awakes present were likely cursing their heavy hats and capes in the August heat, we can only speculate what the tight-lipped Lincoln thought of this intrusion.

♪♪ As autumn settles in, four candidates remain in the field, three promoting or at least condoning slavery -- Democrat Stephen Douglas, Lincoln's home-state rival, Constitutional Unionist John Bell from Tennessee and Southern Democrat and current Vice President, John C. Breckinridge.

Lincoln stands as the lone voice against the spread of slavery.

-As we get into the fall of 1860, it's still anybody's game.

-And Lincoln's party knows what it needs to do to win.

-We appreciate everything you all have done.

-The last time around in 1856, they really did well in kind of the upper north, but they didn't win that swing area of the lower north.

-If Lincoln is going to win the election, he is going to have to sweep the North, including the country's biggest electoral prizes -- Pennsylvania and New York.

Their platform is more moderate than it was in '56.

And this time around, the Republicans have the Wide Awakes firing up the youth vote.

-So having that energy in your campaign is a huge asset.

Young people on the ground do your door-to-door, canvassing, tends to attract, I think, more energy and more vitality to your campaign.

-Wanted to make sure we could count on your vote to go Lincoln's way coming up this election.

-And in this high-stakes election year, there could be a fine line between vitality and violence.

[ Thunder rumbling ] [ Clock chiming ] [ Men chanting indistinctly ] -In lower Manhattan, a local Wide Awake hangout sits across the street from the New York Hotel, a favorite of Southern Democrats.

[ Drum beating ] When the Wide Awakes try to raise a banner for Lincoln in direct view of the hotel, chaos erupts.

-Come on, boys!

-[ Yelling indistinctly ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Let's go!

♪♪ ♪♪ -And it kind of seems like an ominous sign to a lot of people that democracy is becoming more violent and more confrontational as this campaign goes on.

They have these rallies in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, all these cities, at the same time on the same day, tens of thousands of people marching in the street, hundreds of thousands of spectators watching them march.

It's really something no one has ever tried before in American politics.

♪♪ -In New York, Chalker and Sperry arrive as honored guests and witness a parade of Wide Awakes that is said to have stretched some 5 miles through downtown.

♪♪ -Huzzah, hoorah, huzzah!

Everybody.

-Hoorah, huzzah, hoorah!

-The boys must drill, drill, drill.

They must look sharp.

The importance of this... -Back in Hartford, with the campaign now reaching its climactic moment, Chalker's Wide Awakes get to work.

-Gentlemen, I'm gonna need you to get every single name on this list.

I believe that's the only correction we had compared... -And the Wide Awakes are out in the streets, not in their uniforms, kind of as plainclothes operatives.

-We notice, sir, that you are a registered Republican.

-So they go vote.

And then they stand around the polls to make sure that Democrats don't try to steal the election from them.

-With four candidates running and New York and Pennsylvania in play, voter turnout is going to be key.

Lincoln had energized the Wide Awakes and the Wide Awakes had energized voters for Lincoln nationwide.

Now it was finally time to see if their man had the votes to become the next president of the United States.

-Fast flying clouds.

A swift fleeting vapor.

Flash of the lightning breaks away.

♪♪ -So this is a huge election.

It has the second highest turnout in American history.

81.2% of those who are eligible to vote go vote on that day.

And those who are not eligible to vote, which mostly women and African Americans and men under 21, they're still turning out to watch the election.

They're still in the street.

They're still trying to get the news.

-The anticipation is especially high back in Springfield.

Lincoln appears calm but is getting impatient.

He's made himself a cheat sheet of the 1856 results.

So as the returns come in, he can sense which way the election is swinging.

♪♪ -Mr. Lincoln.

Votes are in in Illinois and Indiana.

You've carried both, sir.

-Wonderful news.

Congratulations.

-Early on, the returns are promising.

Illinois and Indiana go to Lincoln.

-The younger generation that's fired up by the Wide Awakes in Western states like Indiana and Illinois, young voters seem to make the difference.

♪♪ -As the results trickle in from all-important Pennsylvania, the anticipation builds further.

-Pennsylvania has gone for Lincoln.

-Ah.

27 more.

-But the celebration can't begin until the returns from the night's largest prize, New York, are in.

-New York and Pennsylvania back then, those two states way outweighed the Electoral College voting might of all the Southern states.

-New York had been leaning Republican, but it also held a strong Democrat base and a booming Democratic voice in James Gordon Bennett.

-There's no cause for alarm for one half of those Wide Awakes are not too big for their mothers to spank.

[ Laughter ] [ Telegraph machine clicking ] -Mr. Lincoln.

You have won New York.

Congratulations, sir.

-It's well after midnight, but in Springfield, the streets erupt in celebration.

[ Crowd cheering ] Lincoln earns 180 electoral votes, 108 more than the second-place finisher, John C. Breckinridge.

-That ends up being a decisive victory for Lincoln.

-However, he wins just 39% of the popular vote.

More than 60% of the population has voted against him.

-You look at the electoral map.

All of the North was solidly for Lincoln.

The South was kind of divided among the three other candidates.

And so this was seen as a kind of a new consolidation of the anti-slavery forces.

-While the politicians and journalists debate what the election results mean for the country, Wide Awakes across the land celebrate late into the night.

♪♪ -Huzzah!

Lincoln!

-And it is during this post-election haze that Lincoln quietly gives a nod to the Wide Awakes.

-Henry Sperry of Hartford, one of the founders of the Wide Awake, sent Lincoln a telegram, telling him that the original Wide Awakes of Hartford congratulated him on his election and thank God for the result of the election.

-Take this, have them send it to Washington, D.C. -Most of the letters and telegrams that Lincoln received immediately after the election were destroyed by his private secretaries, but this document survived, and it's now kept in Lincoln's private collection of papers at the Library of Congress.

That gives a sense of just how important this one sheet of paper was to the president-elect.

-[ Yelling indistinctly ] -Are you gonna elect an abolitionist president and destroy the Democratic Party!

-Panic sets in.

-A lot of Southerners feel like they've lost more than an election.

They feel like there's a permanent military force in the North in the Wide Awakes that is going to occupy the South, that's going to forcibly end slavery.

-In Springfield, Illinois, preparations are made for Lincoln's journey to his new home in Washington, D.C., and it doesn't take long before Lincoln's confidants begin worrying for his safety.

One even suggests sending Wide Awakes to the capital ahead of Lincoln's arrival.

-General Hunter.

"100,000 Wide Awakes to Washington."

Please wire General Hunter and tell him no.

-Consistent with his guarded approach to the Wide Awakes, Lincoln declines.

-Have you seen this?

-[ Laughing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -The situation is approaching a tipping point.

The Union will soon rupture.

In the South, local militias built up during the election form the backbone of the Rebel army.

In the North, Wide Awakes volunteer by the thousands to fight for the Union.

-Those young men of 1860 marching in their oil-skin capes and carrying torches, many of them became the young men of 1861, putting on blue uniforms and carrying muskets.

-Of the original Hartford Wide Awakes, 80% would go on to serve.

James Chalker, their leader, would reach out to Lincoln through a mutual contact to request a special commission.

And in another subtle acknowledgment of the Wide Awakes, we see Lincoln's measured response.

-"I have no reason to doubt that Mr. James S. Chalker is, as he says, the author of the Wide Awake order.

Please add your recommendation to mine, that he have some suitable appointment in the army which he desires.

When you shall have added your word, send the whole to the war department.

Yours truly, A.

Lincoln."

-So I've spoken with Mr. Mowgli at the clothing company... -In just a single year, James Chalker, Henry Sperry, and a group of friends had gone from a storefront in Hartford to the desk of the president of the United States.

-And it's an incredible testament that they were able to do that in an era before Twitter, before hashtag, without modern technology.

-Creating a movement that would not only reinvigorate America's democracy, but help drive it towards its breaking point.

-We're used to living in a time of partisanship and mass demonstrations, but we've seen nothing like the Wide Awakes in our culture.

-The Wide Awakes had really prepared a lot of Americans for war.

-You have to imagine this mass movement of young men in military uniforms marching throughout a big portion of the country.

They thrilled people who are supportive of it and they terrify people who are opposed to it.

It changes American democracy and helps precipitate the Civil War in ways that we're still understanding today.

-Huzzah!

-Hoorah, huzzah, hoorah!

Hoorah, huzzah, hoorah!

Huzzah, hoorah, huzzah!

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪