His dissertation, "The Dupes of Hope Forever": The Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Movement, 1820s-1870s, is the first and only history of
locofocoism.
This article thus expands on one of the few studies of the political ideology of Hunters' Lodge propaganda: Andrew Bonthius' characterization of the Patriot War as "
Locofocoism with a gun." Bonthius' study similarly emphasizes "the commonalities of life in the US and UC [Upper Canada], using Ohio as a test case, which led American and Canadian radical 'reformers' to join hands in battle." (10) This movement was tied together by shared institutional forms, ideologies, leaders, and practices that provided the basis for establishing trust and hence enabling rapid mobilization in the Hunters' Lodge.
If this judgement was correct, then most Illinois Whigs were indeed "cringing suppliants," while the Whigs of Abraham Lincoln's Springfield, including the future president himself, could afford to be "overbearing tyrants." Springfield was long regarded as an anomalous Whig stronghold, in Democratic eyes "the foul `spot' upon the state" and to Whig thinking "a green spot in the great desert of
Locofocoism." Springfield Whigs typically counted on majorities of 60 percent in presidential elections, while even the neighboring precincts in Sangamon County routinely went Democratic.
Locofocoism, a radical offshoot of Jacksonianism, developed as the organized political expression of this radical conception of banking and by the mid-1830s had become the new motor force of radical democratic politics in much of the nation, including most of the Great Lakes states and large parts of the West.