Locofocos
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The Locofocos were a radical faction of the Democratic Party that existed from 1835 until the mid-1840s. The faction was created in New York City as a protest against that city's regular Democratic organization ("Tammany Hall"), and 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 the hall where the group met, which used lanterns lit with matches, or "loco focos" (a Spanish language phrase meaning "crazy lights"), a new invention.
In the 1840 election, the term "Locofoco" was applied to the entire Democratic Party by its Whig opponents, both because Democratic presidential candidate 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 and greater circulation of specie and against paper money, financial speculation, and union-busting.
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.
[edit] See also
[edit] 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)
