Wide Awakes, Half Asleeps, Little Giants, and Bell Ringers: Political Partisanship in the Catskills of New York during the Elections of 1860 and 1862

Abstract

Wide Awakes, Half Asleeps, Little Giants, and Bell RingersPolitical Partisanship in the Catskills of New York during the Elections of 1860 and 1862 Melissa Franson (bio) By the late fall months of 1860, many Catskills residents were simply exhausted by the unrelenting campaigning for the upcoming presidential election. One Greene County resident expressed his growing annoyance in a letter to the editor, complaining that "nothing but political discussions is ringing in your ears. Wide Awakes, Half Asleeps, Little Giants, Bell Ringers, Torch Lights, &c. appear to be the absorbing topics." The author seemed chiefly upset with the rampant consumption of alcohol that accompanied politicking, and especially by young Wide Awakes: "Good rum, bad rum, old rye, rye in the sheaf, and various other genteel drinks are in great demand. All hands appear to take the stimulant, and it is not an uncommon thing to see a half grown boy, with a big cape and cap on, bearing a torch … step up to the bar and take a horn, as the boys term it. I am afraid in some cases their dear mothers don't know they're out." Looking forward to the time when "all settle down after the excitement and become good men and women," the writer acknowledged that "without a doubt, all will be exceedingly glad when the great political campaign is over."1 The Catskills region of New York was awash in political activity throughout the fall months of 1860. Newspaper editors filled their pages with opinion pieces offering their political predilections and castigating their opponents while residents organized political clubs, held mass meetings, and participated in public demonstrations of political fealty.2 [End Page 149] However, the pages of local Catskills newspapers also reveal communities deeply divided in their politics, divisions which partisan editors stoked throughout the 1860 political campaign in their efforts to entice voters to their chosen political camp. In the aftermath of the election, editors towed their party lines, with Democrats expressing fears that the Republican victory spelled doom for the Union, and Republicans promising it would not. Once the war began in April 1861, partisan editors ratcheted up their attacks against those of the opposing political party, publishing weekly editorials that called into question their rivals' loyalty to the Union. The political atmosphere in the Catskills region from the fall of 1860 through the fall of 1862 was fraught with hostility as members of the press carried on a war among themselves. The five counties that comprised the mountainous Catskills region—Sullivan, Ulster, Greene, Schoharie, and Delaware—were defined by their integration into New York City and southern markets. There, nearly one hundred miles north of New York City, just west of the Hudson Valley, and east of the Delaware River that borders New York and Pennsylvania, a series of waterways and canals connected the towns of the rural Catskills to the Hudson River and the Delaware River systems, thereby providing easy access to New York City and other urban centers. Catskills farmers produced an abundant amount of agricultural goods shipped and sold to urban markets, but their largest and most lucrative products were butter, lumber, and leather. During the early years of the nineteenth century the rise of leather tanneries in the Catskills region had spurred a precipitous growth of small towns in the Catskills as proximity to New York City prompted the proliferation of tanneries and related businesses, including hundreds of sawmills that turned the leftover wood of hemlock trees into lumber, which became central areas of commerce in rural areas. The Catskills region produced multiple agricultural goods for New York City markets and understood southerners were a substantial purchaser of their agricultural goods.3 Catskills residents believed that their economic interests were entwined with those of southerners, expressing fears about possible economic calamity that might result from the outcome of the election. The Catskills, a rural region with its close commercial ties to New York City, does not fit neatly into historical characterizations of New York politics during the 1860 election. Most of the history written about New York State politics during the Civil War era focuses on the various Albany and New York City factions of politics...