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TheLocofocos (alsoLoco Focos orLoco-focos) were a faction of theDemocratic Party in American politics that existed from 1835 until the mid-1840s.
The faction, originally named the Equal Rights Party, was created inNew 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 theWorking Men's Party, the latter of which had existed from 1828 to 1830.[1] They were vigorous advocates oflaissez-faire and opponents ofmonopoly. Their leading intellectual was editorial writerWilliam Leggett.
The nameLocofoco derived from "locofoco, a kind of frictionmatch". It originated when a group ofJacksonians used such matches to light candles to continue a political meeting after Tammany men tried to break up the meeting by turning off the gaslights.[2]
The Locofocos were involved in theFlour Riot of 1837. In February 1837, the Locofocos held a mass meeting in City Hall Park (New York City) to protest the rising cost of living. When the assembled crowd learned that flour had been hoarded at warehouses on the Lower East Side, hundreds rushed to the warehouses resulting in the arrest of 53 people. The New York State Assembly blamed the Locofocos for the unrest and opened an investigation into them.[3]
The Locofocos never controlled the party nationally and declined after 1840, when the federal government passed theIndependent Treasury Act. This assured them that the government would not resume its involvement in banking, which had been a key aim of the faction.[4] In the1840 election, the termLocofoco was applied to the entire Democratic Party by itsWhig opponents, both because Democratic PresidentMartin Van Buren had incorporated many Locofoco ideas into his economic policy, and because Whigs considered the term to be derogatory.
In general, Locofocos supportedAndrew Jackson and Van Buren, and were forfree trade, greater circulation ofspecie, legal protections for labor unions and against paper money, financialspeculation, and state banks. Among the prominent members of the faction wereWilliam Leggett,William Cullen Bryant,Alexander Ming Jr.,John Commerford,Levi D. Slamm,Abram D. Smith,Henry K. Smith,Isaac S. Smith,Moses Jacques,Gorham Parks, andWalt Whitman (then a newspaper editor).
Ralph Waldo Emerson said of the Locofocos: "The new race is stiff, heady, and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost all laws."[5]
Locofocoism influenced Canadian politics throughWilliam Lyon Mackenzie. Mackenzie, an influential newspaper publisher and parliamentarian, became sympathetic to the Locofocs after meetingAndrew Jackson in 1829.[6][7] Frustrated byTory control of Canadian politics, Mackenzie led the 1837Upper Canada Rebellion and proclaimed a short-lived "Republic of Canada" during thePatriot War with help from American militias.[7] LocofocoAbram Smith and many others would become active in AmericanHunter’s Lodges dedicated to endingBritish rule in Canada.
Mackenzie was imprisoned for violating theNeutrality Act during the Patriot War, but pressure from sympathetic Locofocos and others forced PresidentMartin Van Buren to pardon Mackenzie in 1840.[8] William Lyon Mackenzie later became an American citizen and Locofoco politician before returning to Canada.[9]
The nameLoco-foco was originally used by John Marck for a self-igniting cigar, which he had patented in April 1834.[10][11] Marck, an immigrant, invented the name from a combination of the Latin prefixloco-, which as part of the wordlocomotive had recently entered general public use, and was usually misinterpreted to mean "self", and a misspelling of the Italian wordfuoco for "fire".[11] Therefore, Marck's name for his product was originally meant in the sense of "self-firing". It appears that Marck's term was quicklygenericized to mean any self-igniting match, and it was this usage from which the faction derived its name.
The Whigs quickly seized upon the name, applying an alternate derivation ofLoco Foco, from the combination of the Spanish wordloco, meaning mad or crack-brained, andfoco, from "focus" orfuego meaning "fire".[12] Their meaning then was that the faction and later the entire Democratic party, was the "focus of folly".[13] The use ofLocofoco as a derogatory name for the Democratic party continued well into the 1850s, even following the dissolution of the Whig Party and the formation of theRepublican Party by formerurban Workingmen Locofocos, anti-slaveryKnow Nothings,Free Soilers,Conscience Whigs, andTemperance Whigs.[14][15][16]
Loco Foco.
John Marck self igniting cigar.
the idea of that song is basically contrasting … the idea of reactionary movements before labor organized really into the unions we have today, reactionary movements of the 19th Century, with today