# Ep. 42: Candlelight Conspiracy

**URL:** <https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/liberty-chronicles/ep-42-candlelight-conspiracy>

**By** Anthony Comegna

**Published:** February 20, 2018

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During a state convention in Utica in September of 1836, ninety three delegates unanimously adopted a resolution to officially establish the Equal Rights Party.

## Summary:

In 1836 Equal Rights Democrats renounced all connections with Tammany and passed resolutions calling for ward me tings and delegate elections to a county convention. Delegates assembled on 9 February in the Eighth Ward. Moses Jacques served as President and wrote the “Declaration of principles.” He was history embodied. Moses’ father was a colonel in the New Jersey militia during the Revolution.

## Further Readings/References:

Bridges, Amy. A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1984.

[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.](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_YMkR65pexQcC)

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.

Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013.

Music by Kai Engel