Ep. 41: What's a Loco-Foco?

The conspirators fully expected Tammany regulars would play whatever dirty tricks necessary to maintain control over the convention.  Each conspirator attended the meeting with pockets full of “Loco Foco” matches and candles. They were a new invention, friction candles ignited by striking the match tip against a surface. Locofoco supposedly entered the American lexicon as a bastardization of the Italian words for moving fire. And these people were definitely fireballs set into motion.

Ashworth, John. “Agrarians & Aristocrats:” Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846. London: Royal Historical Society. 1983.

Byrdsall, Fitzwilliam. The History of the Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Party: Its Movements, Conventions, and Proceedings with Short Characteristic Sketches of Its Prominent Men. New York: Burt Franklin. 1967.

Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1960.

Lause, Mark. Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2005.

Music by Kai Engel

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