The Locofocos: Urban “Agrarians”

Carl N. Degler

The Journal of Economic History, 1956, vol. 16, issue 3, 322-333

Abstract: Most students of Jacksonian America are familiar with the Locofocos of New York through the interesting and informative history of the party which its secretary, Fitzwilliam Byrdsall, published in 1842. But Byrdsall himself was primarily interested in the antimonopoly features of his party's program, and therefore his history all but ignores the even more significant monetary policy of the Locofocos. At the present time in historical writing, it is fashionable to emphasize the role played by the Jacksonian movement as a whole in liberating the expanding American economy from the fetters of a dying mercantilistic approach to business enterprise. There is much to be said for such an interpretation. But the Jacksonians faced toward many meccas, and one of the most articulate and widely known groups which rallied around the Jackson standard—the Locofocos—cannot be trimmed to this pattern.

Date: 1956
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