‘Absolutely one of a kind’: 1860 banner links Libertyville to Lincoln election

A delicate maneuver has ensured Libertyville’s tie to an influential grass-roots movement that helped elect Abraham Lincoln president in 1860 will be preserved.

The link is a nearly 6-foot-by-6-foot banner. It’s made of black silk with gold leaf lettering and features a hand-painted image of a long ago torchlight rally in Chicago by an anti-slavery youth movement known as the Wide Awakes.

More than a piece of fabric, the banner is “a symbol of Libertyville’s activism and its enduring connection to one of the most transformative elections in U.S. history,” explained Jenny Barry, president of the Libertyville Historical Society.

Early on, the banner surfaced in various places including the 1860 Lake County Fair and the Illinois State Fair in 1909. But most of the time it’s been on display at a converted library turned museum in downtown Libertyville.

This past week, staff from the Conservation Center of Chicago gingerly removed the banner from its original display case for what is believed to be the first time in 98 years for long-sought expert repair and restoration.

“It is an absolutely one-of-a-kind historical artifact,” Barry said. “No one else has this banner.”

Libertyville wasn’t incorporated until 1882. But at the Chicago rally, on Oct. 2, 1860, the area had the largest marching delegation of Wide Awakes compared to the number of Republican votes in the township in 1858.

Because Libertyville’s contingent of 73 was the most among all participants, they were given the Wide Awakes banner and secured a place in the history of the influential group.

Restoration — to include stabilizing the silk, repairing painted detail and building a custom, museum-grade display case with ultraviolet protection — will cost an estimated $30,000 and is expected to take six or seven months.

A newspaper article from 1860 described the back as having the words “Lincoln and Hamlin, Liberty and Union.”

The Wide Awakes were a national, grass-roots organization supporting the then-six-year-old Republican Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery.

Through rallies and parades, the group showed other presidential candidates how to organize effective campaigns and attract first-time voters, notes a National Park Service article “The Wide Awakes: The Young Revolution of 1860.”

According to historical society research, the most likely origin of the name is an 1860 Hartford Courant article on the issue between free and slave labor that took hope in the fact that Republicans were “wide awake.”

In “Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War,” Jon Grinspan, a member of the National Museum of American History staff at the Smithsonian, said fired-up young Northerners defended anti-slavery speakers from attacks.

The movement expanded to include hundreds of thousands of young, mostly working-class Americans, according to a book summary.

In Libertyville, each of the identified Wide Awakes were community leaders.

By the 1920s, the banner had made its way to the Cook Library, located in Ansel B. Cook’s 1878 Victorian home in the center of town. The home and property had been donated to the village to use as a library and park.

When a new, adjoining library was built in the late 1960s, the restored home became headquarters of the Libertyville Historical Society and a museum highlighting a bygone era.

Among the attractions was the Wide Awakes banner, displayed in what is believed to be the same wood and glass frame donated by the Libertyville Women’s Club in 1927. Original Wide Awakes torches and a reproduction uniform with dramatic cape and cap also are on display.

The society over eight years saved $15,000 and raised other funds before launching a preservation initiative June 1 to secure the rest.

“We’re just absolutely thrilled our members and the community supported us so quickly and could get this work done,” Barry said.