The Wide Awakes in 1860 Battled for Abraham Lincoln’s Election Sending Fear Into Ranks of Democrat Slaveholders

Oh the glorious irony that “The Wide Awakes,” mostly young white Americans of humble means in 1860, were the patriotic abolitionists who battled against the old RINO types of the Republican Party (formed only 6 years previously) to see that Abraham Lincoln won the Republican Party’s nomination and U. S. presidency then engaging the Civil War to free the slaves.