Editing Wide Awakes (section)

===Uniform and tactics===

The Wide Awakes were a marching club. Their uniform was a full robe or cape and a military style hat, both made of black, shiny fabric. They carried a torch six feet in length to which a large flaming pivoting whale-oil container was mounted. Some carried rail-splitter [[axe]]s strapped to their backs. The axes and split rails symbolized Abraham Lincoln, "the rail splitter."<ref name=Goodheart2011>{{cite book |title=1861: The Civil War Awakening |first=Adam |last=Goodheart |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York |year=2011 |isbn=9781400040155 |oclc=676726649 }}</ref>{{rp|47}}

They marched without speaking, eyes fixed straight ahead. Their only sound was the rhythm of a [[Marching percussion|marching drum]] and the noise of their boots striking the ground in unison. Their marches were at night, lit by torches, in outdoor public places in cities in the American northeast. The gatherings of the Wide Awakes were very different from all previous American political rallies, which featured boisterous daytime parades, songs, and brass bands.<ref name=Goodheart2011 />{{rp|48}}

A Boston Wide Awake rally in October 1860 was one of the last before Lincoln was elected and the Civil War began. In this rally, Wide Awakes lit their torches all at the same moment, synchronized by the sound of a single gunshot. They marched in a zig-zag pattern imitating a [[split-rail fence]]. They held banners with anti-slavery messages, such as ''The Pilgrims Did Not Found an Empire for Slavery''. The rally included both black and white people. A company of 200 Black men, the West Boston Wide Awakes, held a banner reading ''God Never Made a Tyrant or a Slave''.<ref name=Goodheart2011 />{{rp|52}}