Bernie Sanders’s theory of political change was at least four decades in the making. His “Not Me. Us.” pursuit of transformation by drawing non-regular and first-time voters into the electoral process began in Vermont in 1981. The results — a socialist with third-party roots rising from small city mayor to US congressman to senator to the heights of national politics — are now legendary.

However, the idea of bringing new voters into political coalition through attacks on entrenched power and the pursuit of common material goals is far from novel. Earlier American struggles for “political revolution” were also dependent on capturing inexperienced electors: enlisting the disengaged, the disenchanted, and those previously blocked from participation by age, race, gender, class, or national status. Challenging a stagnant political system by attempting to remake the voter base toward workers has been an aim of movement politics from nineteenth-century farmer-labor parties through Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s.

In the years before the Civil War, the new antislavery Republican Party offered the earliest large-scale instance of mass democratization combined with progressive political reform. And during the crucial presidential election year of 1860, this insurgent electoral movement was safeguarded by a novel paramilitary-style organization — a loose-knit group of local organizations that held mass rallies, marches, and demonstrations for Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. Called “Wide Awakes” for their vigilance against the slave system, these militant networks reshaped the national political landscape and helped elect Lincoln president.