The Wide Awakes
I stumbled on the above picture in the Wikipedia entry for the Wide Awakes. This was an era when young Republicans could rally for Lincoln and the end of slavery and have fun doing it
One of the first items of business, once the club was organized, was to invite “the ladies” to meetings. Many members were single young men, and the campaign occurred during a relatively slow social season following the picnics, steamboat excursions, and other outings of the summer, and preceding the balls sponsored by militia companies, fire companies, and fraternal lodges during the winter. Campaign clubs helped to extend and connect the social seasons for single young men and women, and gave both an occasion for high-spirited travel.
See the Democratic Party was split between north and south on slavery and
The point here is NOT that they lived in bizarro world — it’s that we live in bizarro world.
- 1865 slavery abolished
- 1920 women’s suffrage
- 1933–1939 new deal
- 1938 44 hour work week
- 1964 civil rights act
- 1967 interracial marriage legal
- 1973 Roe v Wade
- 1987–1990 homosexuality removed from disease category
- 1998 workplace orientation discrimination illegal
- 2011 don’t ask don’t tell repealed
- 2015 same sex marriage legal
- 2020 protections for LGBTQ employees
- 2022 Roe v Wade repealed?!?
After over a 150 years of fairly regular limiting of oppression suddenly the “Thou shalt not pass!” sign goes up in a very un-American way.
The conventional wisdom is that globalization and demographic changes in America have caused many to become less generous. That the rise of women in the workplace and diminution of manual labor have made men less generous. That the internet brings out everyone’s worst selves.
Just thinking out loud but what if the above are not at all correlated with America’s supposed conservative turn? What if it’s just that rich people are less generous?
After all isn’t that what the Wide Awakes were really fighting?
Those searching for reasons the American economy is uniquely severe and unbridled have found answers in many places (religion, politics, culture). But recently, historians have pointed persuasively to the gnatty fields of Georgia and Alabama, to the cotton houses and slave auction blocks, as the birthplace of America’s low-road approach to capitalism.