“No one will tell you that the Civil War began in Hartford, Connecticut. … But if you want to explain how ordinary democratic practices led to fratricidal war, how political conflicts became military ones, and why the war came in 1861 rather than 1850, or 1820, or 1619, Hartford may be a wise place to start,” Jon Grinspan writes in his latest book Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War. While the capital of Connecticut today may be better known as the home of pencil-pushing insurance executives, in 1860, the city served as the birthplace of one of America’s most successful and shortest-lived mass movements in politics.