WIDE AWAKE! the Woke Young Men of the Republican Party "We ought to have some good rousing meetings in this county. We should be wide awake in every town, so that when the leaves fall in November, the worn out Democracy (Democratic Party) may fall to and “sleep, the sleep that knows no ending.” at Danbury & Litchford CT Aug. 30,1860 Night time march of national gathering of Wide Awakes in NYC   July 1860 depicted in Harper's Weekly         Wide Awake clubs formed spontaneously all over the North to support Lincoln. Composed mainly of young men, they marched at midnight carrying oil lamps to make sure people were "wide awake" about what was going on in the country and what was at stake in the coming 1860 election.  Wide Awakes wore oil skin cloaks  for safety since there was so much oil splashing about from their lamps as well as for the effect of so many lights reflecting off the slick capes.          Wide Awake...

        The Lincoln’s knew how to throw a party.  Abraham Lincoln’s second Inaugural Ball took place March 4, 1865, the evening after he had been sworn into office for a second term. (It was not until the 1930s that the inauguration of presidents was changed to January.) Counting the ticket sales and the formal invitations four thousand people attended the ball.  The event was a spectacular success and a spectacular mess.      The government patent office was the only building large enough for the event.  Now, you may wonder why the Patent Office had such a huge building.  Well, it’s because they had to store and display the thousands of models required of each patent filed. Don’t ask me what the Patent Office did with the models to make room for the ball.      Newspapers in the big cities, Washington, New York, and Philadelphia wrote similar reports of the event. I have chosen to reproduce the account from the Washin...

          The Emancipation Proclamation  "One Last Card" by John Tenniel appeared in the October 1862 issue of the British satire magazine Punch ( Tenniel later became famous as the first illustrator of Alice in Wonderland) Emancipation Proclamation             Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was not a straightforward freeing of all slaves. In fact, it pleased nobody except those held in bondage behind Confederate lines on whom it had no effect. It was not meant as a humanitarian gesture, rather as an attempt to entice states in rebellion to rejoin the Union.               It was a political ploy which did not work as intended.             Lincoln waited to issue the proclamation until the Union had won a great military victory—and Union victories were few and minor until Se...

  Charles P. Stone, Brigadier General, USV Inauguration Day Washington March 4, 1861 Protecting Lincoln           The Century magazine compiled a four volume history of the Civil War with an emphasis on having participants of a particular campaign or incident write about it.   The series was lavishly illustrated with new engravings as well as reprints of engravings the magazine had published before. The first of the four thick volumes starts with an account by Brig. Gen. Charles Pomeroy Stone, (September 30, 1824-Jan 24, 1887) the officer charged with protecting Lincoln and Buchanan on inauguration day as well as organizing the defense of the District of Columbia. Charles Pomeroy Stone was an 1844 graduate of West Point. He fought in several battles of the Mexican War and came out of the conflict promoted to captain.   Soon afterwards he resigned his commission because a captain’s pay would not support his wife and gro...