CAUCUS, a meeting, private or public, of citizens to select candidates for office; or of members of a legislative body for a similar purpose. Recently the meaning of the term has been extended to almost any conference previous to final action. Thus the people may hold a C. to ask or instruct their representative to support one or another measure; or the members of a party in congress, legislature, common council, or town meeting may hold a C. to determine their course upon any subject. Legitimately, therefore, the term C. means a preliminary or preparatory meeting to arrange methods for some designated end. Much effort and ingenuity have been spent in trying to settle the origin of the term, but the most probable theory is that it came front Boston about the middle of the last century, and originally meant " the calkers' meeting," that is, the private gathering of the ship-calkers. The term was applied altnost indiscrimi nately to meetings in the period preceding the revolution, and when the federal government was instituted it was accepted as the official term for what are now called " nominating con ventions." Candidates for president of the United States were uniformly selected by a C. of the members of congress of the several parties, from 1789 to 1823. In the election
of 1824, the regular democratic C. candidate, William H. Crawford, ran behind both Jackson and Adams, and but for some jugglery in New York would have run even behind Clay and come out the lowest of the four. This result ended the congressional C. system of presidential elections, and since that time candidates have been nomi nated by national conventions or political parties. Soon afterwards state conventions supplanted the legislative C. for the nomination of state officers, and now the C. is prac tically confined to the meetings of partisans in legislative bodies to decide upon a policy, or to select candidates for presiding and other officers of the particular body, or (by joint C. of senators and members of assembly) to settle upon nominees for U. S, senators. Outside of these special functions partisan work is now usually managed by conventions of the party at large, or by smaller conventions of delegates chosen by the voters of the party, or by committees appointed by such conventions.