Lincoln was not a household name in early 1860. That spring, the lanky Illinoisan was on a Northeastern speaking tour in the run-up to the Republican nomination contest. Hartford was his sixth stop in little over a week. Yet Lincoln gave a tremendous speech, packing its City Hall and warning that slavery was “a venomous snake” poisoning the nation. Afterward, he stepped out into the bracing Connecticut night for a procession back to his hotel. With so many events in one week, he had met his share of local dignitaries and bumpy rides.
But in Hartford, something unusual stepped out of the darkness—stern young men wearing black soldier’s caps and black capes. Each clutched a lit torch on a long staff. Each was silent. This corps encircled Lincoln’s carriage and began the march. They were sober, dignified, even soldierly. Torchlight flickered on Lincoln’s bemused face as he assessed the uniformed boys around him. He could not have imagined how this strange new force would become entangled with his destiny, nor that almost exactly one year later, hundreds of members of the same movement would follow him down Pennsylvania Avenue to his inauguration.
That was all in the future. In March 1860, Hartford’s boys had work to do. They began growing their club, first among the clerks working downtown, then with the pistol-makers at Colt’s factory. Soon, Chalker, as captain, took their show on the road. One hundred black-caped Wide Awakes rode a special train to a Republican rally in Waterbury, Connecticut. In the town square, “a howling mob” of Democrats disrupted the speakers, shouting, throwing rocks and even rolling a flaming barrel of tar down the street.
As they hollered, Chalker lifted his head. “About face!” he commanded. One hundred uniformed Hartford boys spun around, facing the mob. Then he shouted, “Wide Awakes, do your duty. … Charge!”
With that, columns of Wide Awakes launched into the motley hecklers, swinging their torch staffs and clearing the square of some 200 troublemakers. Waterbury’s Republicans got the message. At the next meeting, they converted their respectable Republican Club into a Wide Awake fighting force.
Hartford’s invention spread. Yergason updated his mom that clubs “have sprung up all over the State patterned after us, are in New Haven and in Waterbury and in New Britain and in Bristol & all around & every time we Come out We make New Republicans of the Democrats.” He even recruited his brother Henry, formerly a Democrat.