Listen to this episode here.

This week, Theresa takes us on a jaunt through history to share about the Wide Awakes, the Republican political movement that elected Lincoln president during the fateful 1860 election. 

Started by Eddie Yergason, who made a cloak to wear to prevent his clothes from getting messed up by the torch he’d carry during a rally that Cassius Clay was speaking at, he galvanizes the party. 

We might have just uncovered Theresa’s new Roman Empire, as she touches on so many previous episodes. 

This episode pairs well with: 
General Harriet Tubman
Cassius Marcellus Clay
Robert Smalls 

Transcript:

Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast. The podcast where two compulsive nut jobs are going to binge history means and then compulsively research the backstories behind them and join forces once a week to verbally assault their co-host with the stories they’ve only recently learned. I’m a silent number one. I’m Teresa and that. 

Angie: What is it when you’re like guilty by association? Angie. That’s me. Guilty by proxy? Yeah, maybe that’s what it is. It’s like because you chose what you like you knew, but you chose not to alert the authorities, you’re guilty too. An accessory. I’m an accessory to your crimes. I’m proud to be here, to be honest. 

Theresa: I had planned on, like I found this one random short story and I was like, oh, you know what? Okay. Like, this can’t be very long. And then I pulled the thread and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. And Angie, I’m taking the full episode. 

Angie: My heart is so ready for this. But before you take the full episode, can I just tell you, I don’t know how I’ve missed this before, but you have a bronchiosaurus just chilling on yourself over there. Yeah, been there for ever. 

Theresa: Once the walls were painted blue. I don’t know. It was one of those. It’s what happens when you need to update your house or your office to be more appropriate for video calls and you tell Kitto, hey, I need you to come with me to HomeGoods and we have like 50 bucks. And she’s like, we need the bronze brachiosaurus. We need it. And I’m like, put it in the cart. She’s not wrong, to be honest. 

Angie: I also liked that you currently have a chair in front of Olga, so she’s not menacingly staring at anyone that you film. 

Theresa: That chair is going to go back to the front porch, but it had to get refinished and it was curing. It’s been a thing. It’s been a thing. 

Angie: Oh, I thought it was there just to protect your viewers from her menacing stare. 

Theresa: I’m not here to protect anyone from Olga when I’m honest. 

Angie: Good for you. My God, I’m proud to know you. 

Theresa: So, okay, carry on. I found a story and I want to say that I know where it came from. The truth is I don’t because I just in my podcast notes or in my notes for stories, I just had three words, the wide awakes. Know who told me about it. Know where I heard the reference. And so I would look at it and go, the what? Okay. 

Angie: Caught them? The wide awakes? Is this going to tie into nightmares? No, no nightmares. No, okay. No, Katy Perry. 

Theresa: Yay. All right. My sources. I started with podcasts as I do. The side door, which is from the Smithsonian. They have the wide awakes. The road to now the wide awakes, the forgotten force that elected Lincoln and spurred the civil war with John Grinspin. History unplugged a radical abolitionist youth movement, consumed America in 1860, elected Lincoln, then disappeared completely. The National Park Service. Oh, carry on. Well, hold on, no, go on. 

Angie: I have the what? They’re on my list of podcasts. 

Theresa: You’ve listened to an episode about the wide awakes? No. 

Angie: The man, I forget what we were talking about one day, but I asked him a question, I think, in regards to Lincoln. And he went on this mission to answer that question, whatever it was, and that’s when we came across this group of young individuals. Okay. That is all I remember. 

Theresa: I’m so excited. All right. National Park Service. The Wide Awake. The Young Revolution of 1860s. Smithsonian Magazine. The Club of Cape Wearing Activists who helped elect Lincoln and spark the civil war by John Grinspin. Are you ready? 

Angie: Can I just tell you the visual that I have for whatever reason when you said 1860s? I was imagining the 1960s, but putting it in an 1860 context. And now let me tell you about the Summer of Love. 

Theresa: I mean, funny you say that because I start in the 1960s. Oh, fascinating. Let’s go. Although I did it for a different reason. I did it because I needed to remind myself that the Republicans and Democrats and what they stand for now seems to have switched. 

They have shifted values and those values were shifted after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And this is something I keep forgetting. Okay. 

So, for whatever reason, my mind for this fact is a Teflon skillet. Yeah, it just slides right on off. So I just want to remind my own brain and if you are like my brain, come along that when the Civil Rights Act passed, many white conservative Southern Democrats became Republicans. And the South that had been mostly Democratic before 1864 is now mostly Republican, even though you’re going to see little pockets of Democrats for what’s going on. You mean 1964, right? Yes, 1964. So now we’re going to go back 100 years. 

Okay. Now we’re going to go to the 1860s. In episode 26, that’s titled, When in doubt capitalism, you covered Cassius Clay. 

The Cassius Clay, which is the namesake of Cassius Clay who becomes Muhammad Ali. My guy. And we’re going to tie into that. 

Okay. Love this. So there’s going to be like a lot of like, hold that thought, hold that thought. Relevance is coming. 

I’m so excited. Okay. So at this point, people, they’re opposed to slavery, but they don’t quite want to abolish it. They’re anti-large plantations taking up the small family owned farms and you know, what not, but they don’t necessarily hate slavery, if that makes sense. Right. Okay. Now, the Southerners only make about a quarter of the population. Wow. Most of the population is Northern based. Okay. 

Angie: For some reason, I thought it was pretty 50-50 at that point. Well, you’d be wrong. You’re in some new. 

Theresa: And only 2% of Americans own slaves. 

Angie: That’s still really high. It is. It is. 

Theresa: But when we think of an entire revolution for 2%, yeah, okay. So to appease the South, the South were given the three-fifths compromise that ensured that power skewed to the South. So they’re counting black people towards representational votes, not giving black people votes, but counting their votes or counting them towards seats and legislature. Right. Okay. By 1860, this had given 30 extra congressmen to the Southern states. 

Angie: This is how we ended up with so many electoral votes in California. I just know it. 

Theresa: I don’t go into that. I don’t know. But the Southern states, because they have this political power, this gives them extra votes. So when an additional state comes into the union and is voted on whether it’s going to be slaveholding or free, it gives the South the opportunity to lean heavy-handed and want for slaves. Okay. Okay. 

All of this background is relevant. I promise you. Now we have some big things happening. There’s the Mexican-American War. 

This is happening with by force. So with that, you have Texas in the whole nine. Now as this is happening, as everything’s kicking off, as all of this awful stuff is happening, it’s easy for you and I to think that if we were in, say, New York City and speaking out against slavery, that our votes, our thoughts, our minds, our free speech would be maybe not applauded, but we would have that freedom of speech. You would think? That’s not what’s happening. 

If you were to go on a street corner and speak out against slavery, even in New York City, you’d get your ass beat. That’s news. Okay. 

Now, that’s one of these awful things, but this is like there’s a lot of people who may not want slavery to spread, but they don’t want it to abolished. Right. Okay. So that’s that weird thing that’s happening. Another thing, so you think about the Supreme Court and it’s easy to think about, like, a lot of this story has so many tie-ins to right now. The Supreme Court is also very much under the slave holding state because it’s 1857 that you have the Dred Scott decision that African-Americans should not be citizens of the United States. 

Now, the problem is that five out of nine of the justices are slave holders. This checks. So everything is stacked against. Right. And I think it’s important for us to understand all of this because this makes that civil war almost a foregone conclusion. 

Like you’re watching this pressure build up. Right. Now we have other people like Clay and anti-slavery Republicans and they’re arguing and they’re arguing against pro-slavery forces. Now you have in the South anti-slavery forces, they’re being driven out of their communities. 

So like abolitionists need newspapers, lecture halls that were hosting anti-slavery speakers, they’re getting attacked by mobs even up in Philadelphia and Boston. And we’ve kind of like this. I think we talked about the Philadelphia one. We talked about Rebecca Crumpler. I think we did. 

Angie: At the very least it was mentioned. 

Theresa: Yeah. So there’s a lot of these things boiling over. And one thing we haven’t touched on at least that I can remember in our podcast is on the floor of the US Capitol we have an abolitionist senator named Charles Sumner. He’s beaten nearly to death for giving an anti-slavery speech. 

Angie: On the floor? Like yes. Right. Yeah. I can’t say we’ve ever mentioned that. That’s new. Okay. 

Theresa: So everybody is deep in their feels. Nobody has taken a couple of deep breaths. Nobody has said we saw nobody. Like we are just out of their ears. Not yet. We are in it and we’re going full tilt and we’re doubling down on all of our decisions. Good or bad. You know this feels really relevant. And here we have this dude named Eddie Jurgensen and he’s living in Hartford, Connecticut. It’s February 25th, 1860. And this is at the start of the state’s spring gubernatorial race. 

Honestly, everything seems pretty easy going, pretty normal. There’s local Republicans who are running against a well-known incumbent candidate. They have a famous speaker in town to give them a campaign speech and they’re planning on doing a torch lit parade afterwards. But it’s 1860. And so this isn’t the ordinary year. As we’ve mentioned, we have these national tensions over slavery. 

They’re at a fever pitch. And this was a few months earlier or a few months before all of this happened. John Brown launched a raid on Harper’s Ferry and I touched on that in episode 100 when we covered Harriet Tubman. Right. Again, like I didn’t go deep because he really deserves his own story. 

Maybe one day I’ll get to it. John Brown, he’s hoping to spark a slave uprising and it ends up with his body swinging from Virginia gallows. And this ends up putting America further into their political corners. We’re just riling everybody up even more. Everybody is expecting a really chaotic and ugly year that’s going to culminate in what they imagine could potentially be a violent presidential election in November. 

We’re in February. Okay. Now, this is the day that we have our boy, Cassius Clay speaking at a rally in Hartford, Connecticut. 

Okay. Now, for those of you playing at home, he’s a fierce abolitionist and we love him for it. And it’s easy for us in our modern view of history to really assume that most people were abolitionists hanging out on the right side of history because slavery is wrong. And so, of course, everybody believed that that’s the truth. 

Angie: But that’s not true. As our boy Cassius discovered, that is not the case. 

Theresa: Yeah, not, not so much. Now I do have a brief synopsis about Cassius Clay for those who may not remember all the back to 26 or haven’t gotten it back there. Cassius Clay, he’s a bold and brawling Kentucky and abolitionist, equally skilled with a stump speed and a bowie knife. He famously fought off six brothers who attacked him with guns, daggers and cudgels at a political debate, killing one with a knife. And, and I love this man. During this time, he promised to launch an insurrection against slavery. That a boy. 

Okay. So now we have our dude, Eddie Yurgison. He’s getting ready to attend the rally. He’s closing up shop at the textile store where he works and lives. And because at the time everybody’s using these oil torches at the rally, he knows that they’re going to sell out. So he steals his. As you do. 

Speaker 4: Now, I guess, I mean, look, I flashlight, you know, honestly, I 

Theresa: don’t think I’ve ever stolen from work, but I’m not going to say much. 

Angie: I know I never have, but I’m thinking if you need a flashlight and hell’s gone to it is going in a handbag, probably get to take the flashlight, you know. 

Theresa: And honestly, maybe you can return it tomorrow. No harm no foul. I don’t know. I don’t know. I, it’s honestly, I don’t know. Let’s go. Okay. Um, so he planned on using an oil powered torch, but I guess the oil powered torches, they spill occasionally and this boy is known for wearing some really fly clothing. And so he decides he’s going to do something to protect himself. So he creates an ad hoc cape. Cause he’s in a textile store. 

Angie: Like, why wouldn’t you? So he’s going to hell and handbasket anyway. You’re going to look fabulous. Yeah. 

Theresa: Trendsetter. I mean, so among us, his four friends come and they end up seeing him and they’re like, you know what, we need one too. So they basically end up skipping the meat and potatoes, the rally and all make capes to look fly. This is giving. Isn’t it? Now they’re each stitching their own fabric, stealing their own torches and then jamming it into six foot curtain rods, I guess because of reach and also maybe continued protection from your own clothing. Okay. And as Clay wraps up his talk across the street, five clerks, clerks threw back their flashy black capes over their skinny little shoulders and stepped into the February darkness. 

Angie: Loving this, loving this. And I guarantee you Clay was over there like the hell. 

Theresa: Pretty much. Now background Eddie Yarkison, he ends up making only $50 a year during this time. He’s sleeping on a cot in the store in his spare time. He sketches cartoons. He writes to his parents in rural Connecticut about his home sickness and his fellow cape wearers are basically the same. They’re in their early twenties. They’re living in cramped boarding houses or with their parents and they’re taking orders all day long. Now they look like uniformed men. 

Love this. Everybody leaves the building. They see these five men in these flashy capes and torches and they escort Clay back to his hotel. Now this isn’t a small rally. This is 1500 people pouring out onto the streets. 

Love this. And Clay and the actual organizers recognize the panache of these men when they see it. And so now these uniformed men are leading Hartford’s most prominent Republicans down Main Street. 

Angie: As you do when you look that flashy. 

Theresa: So these young 20 year old boys men they look like headliners now. Yeah. 

Angie: Listen as my son would say it’s all about the trip. What is the trip. How cool you look. Oh do you look fly. Do you have the right Nike zone. Does your collar pop the right way. How’s your hair looking today. 

Theresa: Pretty poor all of them. Thanks for asking. You’re welcome. I mean I’m going to be honest. Now here’s the thing that basically I didn’t see coming but I guess I should have because they end up getting into a fight with the Democrats in the street because the biggest thing you could do during the day was fight about politics. This feels so so today. Yep. 

I mean we’ve seen protests and anti protests before and it seems par for the course. From today’s standards. Yeah it really does. This is being kind of a minor frocus by the standards of the 19th century. But it’s proof of everything that Clay is warned against. For him slavery is not just a matter of plantations in Georgia or Texas that the slave power and the Democratic Party impose on everyone. The fight for democracy would play out in the streets of Hartford. Now Clay strict abolitionists. 

But if you look at people speaking out against slavery further north or whatever what you’re seeing is not them talking about being against slavery but they want to be able to have free speech like getting their asses handed to them. 

Angie: OK. So this is kind of a very interesting version of one stone sort of thing. 

Theresa: Right. You know you don’t have to be abolitionist to be like you know I should be able to say that out loud with my full chest. Yeah. Agreed. Either way these are the things. Now the March ends with Clay getting to his hotel. He goes to bed. The workers collect torches. 

Yorkison carefully folds up his little makeshift cave. And this becomes an artifact of a movement that is going to literally remake American democracy. And another young man he’s an editor for the Connecticut or the Hartford Corrent. He put together an article for the evening and in 19. 

Nope. In 1860 he cheered that the Republicans were quote finally wide awake. OK. Because at this point the Republican Party has been splintered right because you’re not a Democrat because you don’t believe in having slaves. But you’re also maybe not an abolitionist or maybe you’re anti immigrant or maybe. And so you don’t have a unifying story that holds you together. There’s no unifying thread of hatred to make you unite with your fellow fellow man. And yeah it’s sad that I said United by hatred. But here we are. 

Angie: And it’s a powerful mover. It is. 

Theresa: So a week after the clay march we have 36 young men who are squeezed into a shabby third floor apartment and this apartment’s rented by Jay Alan Francis. This is above the city bank where he worked. Now the boys usually gathered in Francis’s rooms to talk politics and sing. So basically tick tock. Thank you for that visual. 

Angie: I was I was it was a choir in my mind. And then you said that. And I’m like oh yeah that makes sense. 

Theresa: You know because they’re not getting there and singing oh come all ye faithful. Great. I got you. Now it’s March 3 1860. And this is when they decided to start a movement. These these guys are between 18 and 24 years old at a time when the voting age is 21. So few had ever voted in a presidential election and none of them had voted in anything this politically charged. 

Angie: Right. I would think really at this time few people ever had. 

Theresa: Yeah. I mean because you’re not too far off the heels of the revolution when we’re completely honest. Yeah. So they get to work. They organize a club. They start voting on how to you know set everything up. 

They adopt a kind of spiffy up version of Yerkes and shiny black cape as the uniform and they elect a captain. You do. So you need structure. 

You need order. So most degree should be this dude named James Chalker. Chalker. He’s a combative goatee Republican who fought Democrats so fearlessly a week earlier. So this is who you want to lead your uniformed military paramilitary organization. This checks. Now they have to do the thing where they pick a name. 

Angie: Put some options in a hat. Pretty much. 

Theresa: Now there were elite organizations with names like young men’s Republican club. But then we also have some real cool ones because white people shouldn’t name things. But we’ve got a couple exceptions here. There were violent street games at the time called the dead rabbits or the blood tubs blood dubs and honestly violent street gangs. You guys start when you can name stuff. I think we will allow you to enter the naming committee. 

Yeah. The Hartford boys they don’t go the straight lay super boring name but they also don’t go down the blood path or the blood tub name. They end up citing the article that you know I referenced earlier and they just start by shouting why not the Republican whitewakes the whitewakes and it was the most popular expression at the time. It’s still catchy. It is. 

And honestly it seemed very reminiscent of woke but I feel like woke has gotten hijacked. I think you’re right. Mm hmm. So it’s interesting to see that theme pop up again. 

Angie: Well we are in a very heated political time. True. 

Theresa: Now as all of this is happening we also need to remember that I kind of eluded this a second ago that it’s during the 1850s that we have the anti-immigrant no nothing movement that had often called their crews wide awakes and they even had some similar floppy white hats and they basically used those as a gang sign. So there’s some like muddled visual language there. 

OK. Now the youths who formed the wide awakes linked everything together in their own minds and building a new movement to fight against what they saw as multiple conspiracies against democracy because young men will typically rally together shake their fists and believe everything is completely black and white not see nuance and just go straight ahead. 

Angie: Are you implying that men are good at this. 

Theresa: I’m saying I see patterns and signs. 

Angie: I’m not saying that I’m a millionaire but there’d be signs. 

Theresa: I mean when I stop taking my medication I won’t tell anybody. But you’ll all have a couple of ideas. 

Angie: You’ll be in the know. 

Theresa: The organization that’s going to destroy slavery grows from these very interesting things because you have the symbology of the anti-immigrant no nothings with the very similar visuals. And then you also have a lot of these people that are very complicated and they have very maybe not the best and cleanest backgrounds themselves. OK. Basically large groups of people are complex because people are complex and the bigger the group is the more potential for things going south. 

Angie: This also feels 100 percent like today. 

Theresa: Yeah. Now it’s also interesting that you know you don’t have like a huge peaceful movement right. You have people literally brawling in the streets. And it’s very hard to convince somebody that your way is the most logical when you’ve just given them a black eye. Are you sure. I’m willing to try it myself. But I don’t think it’s worked previously. 

Angie: Oh. So I was wrong. I owe somebody an apology. And a nice pack. 

Theresa: Now they’re not simply just fighting these battles. They’re also. I’m going to scrap that whole sentence. OK. So as all this is happening we have something even crazier and more impressive that happens. Members of Yerkesen’s Club meet Abraham Lincoln. OK. Because every there’s this entire storm happening in a tea cup that is the U.S. Lincoln isn’t the household name that we know right now, like in early 1860. He’s only really had like one term in office. He hasn’t done a whole lot. He’s a moderate. He’s not a polarizing force. Right. Darn it. And he goes to Hartford to campaign. He’s one of four candidates for the presidential race. 

Angie: I hadn’t even thought about other candidates at the time of Lincoln. 

Theresa: You just assumed one in my mind. He really unopposed and we put him into office. Yeah, I kind of did. 

Angie: Like who else was there? 

Theresa: So the White Awakes show up and they, we have our dude Chalker, the one who’s leading the group. He hollers about face and a hundred uniformed Hartford boys spun around and faced a mob because of course Lincoln preaching his, you know, moderate views that don’t include abolishing slavery but don’t include allowing it to spread seemed charged in this political space. So there’s a mob there. And that’s when you have a hundred White Awakes in complete uniform show up ready to defend the president or presidential candidate. 

Angie: And this is all because some guy didn’t want to spill oil on his own shirt. Yes. I love that little connection. That’s so much fun. 

Theresa: This is like, it’s like, wait a minute. He just, he just wanted to keep his clothes nice. 

Angie: Like, does he just put an apron on? Pretty much. 

Theresa: So Chalker yells charge and then you have columns of White Awakes that just launch into the mob of hecklers. They’re swinging their torches and they clear the square of 200 troublemakers. So the outs are two to one and they won even though they were outnumbered. And it’s at that point that the Republicans really have sent a loud message and that’s when the next meeting converts the respectable Republican club into a White Awake fighting force. So there’s just a shift. Okay. The White Awakes gave off what one Southern observer referred to as quote, an air of bayonet determination. 

Angie: I also want to give off an air of bayonet determination. I’m here for it. Yeah. 

Theresa: You get a lot more done. Don’t you think? Yeah. Right? You speak softly, carry a big stick. 

Angie: Big fan of that phrase. Thank you. 

Theresa: Thank you, Rosa. Now it’s easy for you and I to assume that there’s going to be some very polarized reporting on this subject. You would think and there was. So whatever you’re imagining, it’s worse. 

Angie: I was imagining today’s news. Honestly, accurate. 

Theresa: Yeah. Where you have the same event told through two different sets of eyes and each set is completely riled up and feels very in the right and motivated by the exact same set of events. 

Angie: And they look so different to the other guy. Yeah. Yeah. 

Theresa: Because there’s zero empathy that’s greased in the wheels of anyone’s brain to be able to see the other and be like, let’s come to the middle. Let’s come to an understanding. Let’s not. 

Angie: How about we just tell a story? You know what I mean? Like, I’ve never understood that about news. Just just give us what actually happened and let us make our own opinion. 

Theresa: Yeah. So we have thousands of recruits that are joined in the movement by early April. Start with five. Five at the end of February. And it’s April. It’s April. And in the spring of 1860, there’s a kid who’s taking tickets at the Hartford train station. 

He starts getting, for whatever reason, a flood of letters from Republicans across the North asking how they can start wide awake companies. The ticket kid is? I don’t. Maybe they’re all just coming to the train station and the mailman has nowhere else to deliver them. And he’s like, I guess I’m the de facto opener of these letters. 

I love this. Okay. So he ends up printing up a form letter explaining how to organize a club, elect leadership and design a uniform and how to march at night. Because that’s important. Honestly, the uniform I feel like was probably the most deciding factor as bizarre as that is. 

No. So they’re trying to capture the movement’s very combative vibe. And the young rider brags wherever the fighting is the hottest, there is their post of duty. And there the wide awakes are found. 

Okay. Now, the wide awakes at this point in my mind seem very much like that one kid. And I say kid, but young dude at the bar who’s pretty much got some big chip on his shoulder is talking about how big of a fighter he is and how much he’s done. He’s the first. 

Angie: But it’s never actually been in a fight. 

Theresa: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, like, okay, that that’s the vibe I get. Okay. Now we have all across the North that this idea, this fight is spreading. And the club as a result is also spreading like an absolute contagion. The club continues to grow. And it starts really developing a bizarre diversity, which I can’t say I saw coming. I love this. You have large number of immigrants that are joining, including Germans and Swedes, Lutherans and Jews, and there’s even Catholics. 

Angie: That would make sense when you think about what their goal is. Elaborate on that. Well, to me, when you think about, like, we’re looking at just from this standpoint, we’re looking at Lincoln and being a moderate, right? And all of these diverse people are coming in and they’re going to be the outliners of society one way or the other. So coming into a group that is accepting, right, and is wants the troops, wants the numbers and has a goal that is comparable to yours as far as like the furthering of society, whether that’s to violently work their goal into the system or peacefully work their goal into the system, is you’re agreeing with what they’re up to, you’re going to gain those people. And when you think about immigration and minority, they will gather in those groups regardless of what the group looks like. So it makes sense to me when you’re talking about this group of young men, whose whole goal was to protect the Republican speaker in the first place. And if that Republican speaker is speaking to what your goal in your personal life is, why wouldn’t you follow him? Right? Like, that’s just my logic on that. 

Theresa: I’m here for it. I just, I’m grateful you’re, because I feel like this whole story is when I could just like steamroll over everything you say. So I want to make sure that I’m not taking all the oxygen. 

Angie: I’m here for it. Take all the oxygen. I am loving it. 

Theresa: So we not only have all of these disparate groups of men, but there’s also young women who are forming wide awake auxiliaries. Yes. We have brave Republicans that are ordering companies in Baltimore, St. Louis, and even Washington, D.C. And that’s where we’re seeing notoriously violent pro-slavery street gangs. And pro-slavery street gangs seem so bizarre when you think that only 2% of the population is actually holding the slaves. 

Angie: That is weird. And it makes you wonder why they’re pro-slavery. Yeah. Because I can’t see the 2% that are actual slaveholders being out in these street gangs. Yeah. Buford. Buford. Yeah. Bring your cultural Buford. It’s not giving, I’m just going to say it’s not giving big daddy from Django Unchained. That seems like something he wouldn’t find himself doing. No. 

Theresa: So I mean, more of this opened a ton more questions and I’ve got answers to, but these are things. Such is life. On top of the people joining the white of wigs, you see, and this makes sense to me, black men joining as well. 

Angie: Again, the majority of the population. Yeah. I’m here for it. That makes sense. 

Theresa: Now, this is kind of the cool thing to see these groups melting together to work together. Black leaders formed their own company in Oberlin, Ohio, and fugitive states and abolitionist leaders launch another one in Boston. Okay. More than a century later, with many of the benefits of hard one, civil rights victories, modern Americans hardly can grasp how powerful and jarring it would have been to see columns of African American men marching in military uniforms down Boston streets at midnight. 

I mean, it’s a visual. I’d have questions. Honestly, I think if I thought, well, I live in Portland, one of the whitest cities in America, so I would be like, Hey, we have that many. 

Angie: Side quest for a second. I also live in the whitest county in America. And someone was making a comment recently on one of the Facebook groups about something they saw in the road. And it was a coconut show. And somebody was like, Oh, is it is it Big Danny’s or whatever? And Big Danny pops on and he’s like, Look, there are only five Samoans in Sonora. It cannot possibly be as I can account for all four of us. 

Theresa: And so it’s like, Oh, did so it go back? And he’s like, Yeah, there was originally seven. There’s only five now. And I was like, Yep, this is 12th County. At its finest. All the Samoans can be accounted for in one go. 

Theresa: The Samoan cohort. And that is not ours. We will be taking questions. 

Angie: Not our coconut. 

Theresa: What a wild thread. 

Angie: You’re welcome. I love that I can contribute in such a strange way. 

Theresa: So we talked about how the Southerners and basically everybody reports on the news in the most inflammatory way possible. The Southerners see this army of destruction that’s training in the night and they decide to inflame fears through as you do spreading deliberate disinformation about seditionist plot or and seditionist plots. 

Okay. So as the election heats up, we’re now like September, October, we have Southern papers that are fretting about this massive midnight uprising. They’re creating so much hysteria about the white awakes in Virginia. One editor insists that wider wakes are hiding rifles under their capes. Are they? 

Angie: Yeah, they got the space down there. Don’t they? 

Theresa: In Georgia, they allotted or they alleged that they are plotting wild orgies of blood, carnage, lust and rapine. 

Angie: That is not how I would describe what I understand of an orgy, but okay. 

Theresa: I mean, if I’m, I don’t, I’ve never been to an orgy, but the second it becomes an orgy of blood, I don’t know. 

Angie: I think we’re out. I mean, honestly, I’m not walking in to begin with, but it feels nothing like what we know of the Roman dinner parties, you know? Yeah, you know. 

Theresa: So now we have, this all leads up to November 6th of 1860. This ends up being what has been referred to as one of the most significant election days in American history. It’s in, it drew one of the highest number of turnouts ever recorded. We had 81.2% of eligible voters that go to the polls. 

Angie: Wow. Okay. 

Theresa: And because I had to look it up, do you know voter turnout percentage for 2024? 

Angie: I want to see it was probably 64%. 

Theresa: Dang, you’re close. It’s 63.9. So 64%. Go buy lottery tickets. Yeah. I’m winning. Dude, so much so. So not only do we have massive voter turnout, we have tens of millions more people who are waiting for the sidelines because, you know, women and minorities can’t vote. So, right. Yeah, that’s the wide awakes. Welcome the dawn in the most unhinged way possible. They’re celebrating with fireworks, can and fire. And then they spend the day quote patrolling polling places across the North, which sounds super chill. 

Angie: Super chill. They’re just handing out coffees to everyone. Yeah. 

Theresa: Now, depending on how you plan to vote, they’re either protecting your democracy or they’re intimidating rivals. 

Angie: This feels like today. Okay. Yep. 

Theresa: So all of a sudden done. Everybody’s cast their votes. Lincoln is sitting nervously in the telegraph office in Springfield and companies of wide awakes stood at attention outside. That is wild. That is not a visual I at all ever heard of when we heard about Lincoln. 

Angie: Yes, never, never in a thousand years. 

Theresa: So news comes slowly across the wires, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, and nearly every doubtful state I voted Republican. Get it. Lincoln, he’s one of four candidates. He’d only won 39.8% of the popular vote. Okay. But he ends up clearing house and getting three fifths of the electoral college. Okay. 

So this is another one of those popular votes versus electoral. And yeah, yeah. How do you feel about it? 

There’s a ton of really bizarre races. Now, in my brain, as I kind of like learned about the wide awakes, this showed to me how much of a steam roller was going towards the Civil War. Because everybody hears about the election results, South Carolina succeeded a little more than a month after Lincoln’s victory. 

Angie: Oh, okay. Didn’t see that coming. 

Theresa: Members of its succession convention invoked, quote, the wide awakes of the North and their way out of the Union. As Republicans worried about attacks on Lincoln’s inauguration, the wide awake hot heads talked of going to Washington to protect their candidate because threats of assassination seem credible. Oh, foreshadowing? Well, yeah, pretty much one letter to Lincoln promised, if you say the word, I will be there with from 20 to a thousand men organized and armed. 

Angie: On your command, sir. Paramilitary. That’s not terrifying, even a little bit, even if they’re on your side. Yeah, no, not even just a little bit. 

Theresa: Lincoln is pretty thinking smart and he discouraged the escalation. He writes a letter back. He thanks the people in Hartford and the wide awakes for their great services, but implies that their work is done. And yet as the inauguration in years, strangers with Yankee accents and revolvers in their pockets are to appear in the capitals, boarding houses. Lincoln finally rides down Pennsylvania Avenue to accept the presidency. He delivers his stirring, inaugural address in March of 1861 and hundreds of plain clothes, wide awakes filled the crowds around him. 

Angie: That is not at all. That gave me chills. That is not at all what I thought his inauguration would look like. Right. 

Theresa: And like at one point in one of the podcasts, because all the podcasts that exist about the wide awakes that I found all had featured the author of the book kind of talking about the wide awakes. And in one of them, he talked about how as Lincoln is walking off stage, the members of the audience are pulling out items that identify them as wide awakes like the hat or the whatever. And so slowly everybody is coming out and being like, Hey, it becomes a crowd. 

Like we got you. Yeah. Which is exactly what he didn’t want. I didn’t ask for this. Yeah. 

Like, thanks guys. You’re just during the pot now though. I’ve already won. Let’s go now. A month later, the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, Harbor. So the bombardment sparks the war but doesn’t kill a single person. 

Angie: Oh, you know who was chilling below Fort Sumter around this time? Our man Smalls. Yeah. What a show you’ve given today. 

Theresa: I know. I’m just trying to tie in every single episode that we’ve gotten. The real bloodshed that happens in the Civil War comes when two clashes involving the wide awakes. It’s April 19th, 1861. We have the National Volunteers, a pro-Southern Democratic militia that’s organized in Baltimore and Washington, and they’re doing it in response to the wide awakes. They end up attacking Massachusetts troops marching through Baltimore, killing several. Not long after, armed wide awakes in St. Louis capture all 800 members of a Democratic militia who were accused of Confederate leanings, and they fire on the crowd, killing 30 people. Dang it. So this is why the wide awakes are so hard to talk about. 

Angie: Right. That feels kind of, that feels exactly like you’d think that it would be, when you’re talking about a group that’s so easily riled. Yeah. Hair trigger. Yeah. Yeah. Good work. Yeah. 

Theresa: Now, it’s at this point we have wide awakes that are racing to join the Union Army because before they had been operating outside. Right. Okay. So whole companies are enlisting together in the war’s first weeks. 

Now, estimates are shaky, but some suggest that three quarters of the nation’s wide awakes fought in the war. Wow. Okay. 

This succeeds. This means that over 50% of the Northerners are wide awakes. I’m not shocked. Now, the Hartford originals, they’re in the epicenter. We have about seven tenths of their company’s officers that enlist, and many right when the war begins in April and May. Now, the five people who show up in the capes and really kick this off, four out of five, are in the mix. 

Angie: And I’m sure five didn’t show up because he lost a shoe or something, because you have to look flashy going in. Well, are you ready for this? 

Theresa: I at least got this. Eddie Yargason, he’s, when he started it, he wrote his mother that he planned to enlist and she wrote back a stern letter telling him to quote, not do anything rashly, leading with him to appreciate your mother’s feelings. 

No one on this broad earth cares for you as much as your mom. He waited a year and then enlisted in Connecticut’s 22nd Regiment. And a photograph shows him still basically a kid. 

And he’s described as a skinny wraith with piercing dark eyes swallowed up by a great army coat. Did not lose his left shoe. He did not. 

So he wasn’t the fifth who didn’t fight, but it was almost three fifths. That’s okay. Now, it takes a long time. It takes decades for Yergason to grasp basically what he had done after creating the first cape. He fell into the background of the original club. He’s not old or well established enough to win elections as an officer, but then as the Gilded Age. 

Angie: Which is wild when you consider it was him that made the first cape. 

Theresa: It is, it is. And I get back to him and how he ends his life. And it’s kind of an incredible and fascinating. So we now have like the Gilded Age opening up. 

You know, we have everybody. Basically, if you were a wide awake and you had a high leadership place, you rose to prominence. You just were elevated to greatness after the Civil War. So the wide awake were a launching point. Now, he starts to show off his original cape that he had shown and the published letters in the Hartford Current explaining that quote, I was the first one to wear a cambered cape with four other young men. We originated the wide awakes and other members affirm Yergason’s versions of events. 

Angie: I love that. Okay. 

Theresa: So he knows like I did this. This is because of me. Sorry. Now, he goes on to be an interior decorator in President Benjamin Harris’s White House. Of course he does. 

Angie: Why am I not even a little bit shocked? Harrison’s also a wide awake. Of course he is. 

Theresa: And it’s Yergason who enlivened the old mansion with electric lighting and bold color schemes and modern window treatments. 

Angie: It is always the modern window treatments. 

Theresa: Because he just wanted to be fabulous. And I’ve got some pictures. 

Angie: Oh, please tell me you do. 

Theresa: So this is one of the original wide awake flags. Okay. I’ll let you describe it. 

Angie: It says, okay, so it’s kind of like a goldish tannish color. Original wide awake, Hartford Connecticut, organized March 7, 1860. It’s got an eye fully awake painted in the middle. I think it’s painted anyway. 

Theresa: Yeah, that would look like that to me. And then these are, this is a picture of them. 

Angie: Heavens, they are wearing, their capes look shiny. They are. Shiny capes with at least three, five of five, maybe six of them have these sort of, they’re the torches. Okay, on the curtain rods. Yep. Yep. 

Okay, that’s crazy. And they, their hats are very reminiscent of exactly what you would imagine across between a Civil War Union soldier to wear and a police hat from the time. There’s five, six, seven, eight, nine, at least 10 men in this photo and they, most of them have killer facial hair. Truth. They’re very serious, all very serious looking in there. 

Theresa: Well, it takes like 30 minutes to take a single photo. You’re not going to be able to cheese it for that long. 

Angie: I’m thinking they weren’t going to cheese it anyway. 

Theresa: No, no, you got to be intimidating. 

Angie: Yeah, they’re very intimidating. Yeah, I’ll give you that. I love it. Absolutely. I love it. 

Theresa: And that is the story of the wide awakes, that I was just like, wait a minute, wait a minute. What? Hold on. This all happened because some young man decided not to get his clothes all jacked up and actually nearly missed the entire, well, basically missed the rally he planned to go to anyhow. I love that for him. 

Angie: Thank you. My pleasure. Proof that fashion will get you anywhere. 

Theresa: And it was me to touch on like a dozen different stories we’ve covered. 

Angie: Yeah, for a dozen different amazing human beings or moments in time. Yes. Meanwhile, Robert Smalls is down there figuring out which barge he’s going to pilfer. Love this. 

Theresa: You said Robert Smalls, I wanted to rename him at least his first name. And so I had to look it up. You’re right. You’re right. I should have known better. It was your story anyhow. 

Theresa: Hey, listen, we’ll have our moments. I constantly read our already done list because I’m convinced I’m going to do one again. It’ll be like, huh, really? 

Theresa: The casket girls of New Orleans. Okay. What new facts are you going to bring to us this time? 

Angie: Yeah, I love it. Sometimes I come across names that I’m like, who is that? 

Theresa: I mean, that’s what made this story so interesting. Because I’m like, oh, from that and then from that and then from that. And I’m like, well, who is this? Don’t say that name because there’s already a ton of names in the story. 

Angie: And we got this. Yeah. Thank you. That made my day. 

Theresa: So if you’re wondering, holy crap, has Teresa’s Roman Empire turned to the Civil War? Or is there anything else that I really need to know? You know, great review, subscribe, join us next week when we undoubtedly is going to touch on at least World War Two, because we’ve had a surprising number of Civil War stories. I know it feels weird. Yeah. And share us with your favorite baby goat herder. And on that note, goodbye. Goodbye. 

Theresa: I would like a favorite baby goat herder.