The Wide Awakes paramilitary group holds its Torch Rally in Manhattan in 1860. Violence ensued.

It’s been a crazy election cycle in the U.S., but it really can’t compare to the 1860 election madness in this country. As the Disunion blog at the New York Times points out, the final vote before the beginning of the Civil War was truly riotous and scary. (Thanks Kottke.) An excerpt from Adam Goodheart’s post:

“On the last Friday night before the 1860 election, Senator William H. Seward delivered a rousing Republican campaign address to a large outdoor gathering on 14th Street in Manhattan. Afterward, crowds of pro-Lincoln ‘Wide Awakes‘ fanned out through the surrounding area. Wide Awakes, members of an organization with strong paramilitary overtones, could be a menacing sight: they wore military-style caps and shrouded themselves in long black capes made of a shiny fabric that reflected the flames of the torches they carried. Some strapped axes to their backs, in tribute to their rail-splitting hero.

According to the next day’s Times and other papers, things began to spin out of control when supporters of a rival presidential contender, John Bell, charged toward the Lincoln men, ‘calling them ‘negro stealers,’ ‘sons of b____s,’ &c.’ At the corner of 12th Street and Fourth Avenue, several dozen volunteer firemen — members of Engine Company 23 — joined the fray, swinging roundhouse blows with clubs and heavy iron wrenches that the Wide Awakes tried to parry with their torches. But the tide of battle turned when the young Republicans brought their Lincoln axes into play. They chased the enemy back into the company firehouse and promptly began smashing down its barricaded doors, as other idealistic marchers flung bricks and cobblestones.”