A fine white powder coated New York City’s streets on the frigid morning of February 14, 1837, but it was not snow. The evening before, rioters had broken into several dry goods warehouses and had heaved hundreds of barrels of flour and a thousand bags of wheat through windows as high as five stories above the pavement. The knee-deep mix of glass, splinters, wheat, and flour on the city’s streets offered material proof that by early 1837, the pressure of 1836 had spread to people who had never discounted a bill of exchange; speculated on cotton; or, perhaps, even heard of the Bank of England.

Why was there a riot? The simple answer is that in just a few months, the price of flour had jumped from $7 to $12 per barrel. Few working people could afford bread. It takes more than hunger, however, to create a riot. Aware of the political potential of starving workers, several candidates from the Equal Rights Party, a splinter group of Democrats derisively dubbed the Loco-Focos by mainstream Democrats and Whigs, planned a rally to “inquire into the Cause of the present unexampled Distress, and to devise a suitable Remedy.” On placards, handbills, and newspaper advertisements, they announced: “Bread, Meat, Rent, Fuel – Their prices must come down.” On the afternoon of February 13, as “the wind blew a Hurricane,” nearly twenty thousand New Yorkers gathered in the park in front of City Hall for a rally.