Extensive Definition
The Locofocos were a radical faction of the
Democratic Party that existed from 1835 until the
mid-1840s.
The faction was originally named
Equal Rights Party, and was created in New York
City as a protest against that city's regular Democratic
organization ("Tammany
Hall"). It contained a mixture of anti-Tammany Democrats and
labor union veterans of the Working
Men's Party. They were vigorous advocates of laissez-faire
and opponents of monopoly. Their leading
intellectual was editorial writer William
Leggett.
The term "Locofoco" comes from Spanish
for matches, or "loco
focos" ("crazy lights"), a new invention. It originated when a
group of New
York Jacksonians
used these matches and candles when a conservative group tried to
break up a meeting by turning off the gaslights.
In the
1840 election, the term "Locofoco" was applied to the entire
Democratic Party by its Whig
opponents, both because Democratic President Martin Van
Buren had incorporated many Locofoco ideas into his economic
policy, and because Whigs considered the term to be
derogatory.
In general, Locofocos supported Andrew
Jackson and Van Buren, and were for free trade, greater
circulation of specie,
legal protections for labor unions and against paper money,
financial speculation, and state banks.
Among the prominent members of the faction were
William
Cullen Bryant, Alexander
Ming, Jr., John
Commerford, Levi D.
Slamm, Isaac S.
Smith, Moses
Jacques, and Walt
Whitman.
See also
References
- Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Jackson. Boston : Little, Brown, 1953 [1945]. For a description of where the Locofocos got their name, see Chapter XV.
- Carl Degler, "The Locofocos: Urban ‘Agrarians’" Journal of Economic History 16 (1956): 322–33. online at JSTOR
- Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005)
- Garraty, John A. The American Nation. New York: Longman (1998).
- John Stilwell Jenkins: History of the Political Parties in the State of New-York (Alden & Markham, Auburn NY, 1846)