REESE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
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THE AMERICAN CAUCUS 
 SYSTEM 
 
 ITS ORIGIN, PURPOSE AND UTILITY 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE W. LAWTON 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 2:t)e Bnicfecrljocfeer Xixtss 
 
 1SS5 
 
t5^'^ .v 
 
 \^'^^^'^ 
 
 rTO 6 3 7^ 
 
 Copyright, 1885 
 
 By G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. Putnam'' s Sons 
 
 New York 
 
THE 
 
 American Caucus System, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ORIGIN AND ADOPTION OF THE WORD "CAUCUS." 
 
 Charles Sumner states he was asked by 
 Brougham in the presence of Lord Lyndhurst, the 
 origin and meaning of ' caucus,' and repHed, '' It is 
 difficult to assign any elementary to the word, but 
 the most approved one referred its origin to the 
 very town, and about the time (1772), of his lord- 
 ship's birth." 
 
 It is a tradition of the ' town ' of Boston that 
 ' caucus ' was a common word there before the 
 Revolutionary War broke out, and that it origi- 
 nated in a feud between the British troops on the 
 one side and the rope-walkers and calkers on 
 the other. Bloody collisions, it is said, occurred 
 between them. The latter held meetings in the 
 calkers' hall in the lower part of the city, at which 
 resolutions were adopted and speeches made de- 
 nouncing the soldiers, who on their part deriding 
 
2 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 the wordy war offered, sneeringly dubbed their 
 opponents ' The Calkers,' which by an easy cor- 
 ruption became ' the caucus,' and finally a term to 
 denote the meetings. 
 
 But the word was in use prior to 1770, the 
 time to which the tradition refers, as may be seen 
 in a passage from the diary of John Adams, bear- 
 ing date February, 1 764, and reading as follows : 
 ** This day learned that the Caucus Club meets at 
 certain times in the garret of Tom Dawes, the ad- 
 jutant of the Boston regiment. He has a large 
 house and he has a movable partition in his garret 
 which he takes down and the whole club meets in 
 one room. There they smoke tobacco till you can- 
 not see from one end of the garret to the other. 
 There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they 
 choose a moderator, who puts questions to the 
 vote regularly. And selectmen, assessors, collect- 
 ors, wardens of fire-wards and representatives are 
 chosen before they are chosen at the town. Uncle 
 Fairfield, Story, Ruddock, Adams, Cooper, and a 
 ' rudis indigestaque moles ' of others are members. 
 They send committees to wait on the Merchants' 
 Club, and propose and join in the choice of men 
 and measures. Captain Cunningham says they 
 have solicited him to these caucuses. They have 
 assured him benefit to his business." 
 
 Also the historian Gordon, who possessed ample 
 opportunity for investigation, in giving the proceed- 
 
THE WORD '' caucus:' 3 
 
 Ings of the General Court of Massachusetts in 
 
 June, 1774, says : " Mr. Sam'l Adams observed that 
 some of the committee were for mild measures 
 which he judged no ways suited to the present 
 emergency. He conferred with Mr. Warren, of 
 Plymouth, upon the necessity of going into spir- 
 ited measures and then said : ' Do you keep the 
 committee in play and I will go and make a cau- 
 cus against the evening and do you meet me.' " 
 
 In a note upon the passage the historian says : 
 '' The word caucus and its derivative, caucusing, are 
 often used in Boston. The last answers much to 
 what we (English) style parliamenteering. All 
 my repeated applications to different gentlemen 
 have not furnished me with a satisfactory account 
 of the origin of caucus. It seems to mean a num-V 
 ber of persons, whether more or less, met together \ 
 to consult upon adopting and prosecuting some I 
 scheme of policy for carrying a favorite point. J 
 The word is not a novel invention. More than 
 fifty years ago Mr. Sam'l Adams' father and 
 twenty others, one or two from the north side of 
 town where all the ship business . is carried on, 
 used to meet and make a caucus and lay plans for 
 introducing certain persons into places of trust and 
 power. When they had settled it they separated 
 and used each their particular influence within his 
 own circle. He and his friends would furnish 
 themselves with ballots including the names of 
 
4 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 the parties fixed upon, which they distributed upon 
 the day of election. By acting in concert together 
 with a careful and extensive distribution of ballots 
 they generally carried the elections to their own 
 minds. In like manner it was that Samuel 
 Adams first became a representative for Boston." 
 
 This was written in 1778. No further informa- 
 tion as to the origin of the word seems to be at- 
 tainable. The diary of Mr. John Adams above 
 quoted from is the oldest writing in which it is 
 found. But Mr. Adams does not use it as a new 
 or strange word but as one with which he was fa- 
 miliar. Possibly it was devised by some one of 
 the Adams family, a people fruitful in ways and 
 means to attain their ends. Gordon's statement, it 
 may be observed, agrees very nearly with the ex- 
 pression of Senator Barbour, of Virginia, made 
 during the famous caucus debate in the Senate of 
 the United States, to which fuller reference will be 
 made, who said : " It [caucus] was first suggested 
 by the venerable Samuel Adams, or his father, and 
 had Its origin in the spirit that gave birth to this 
 nation." 
 
 But while the origin of the word Is uncertain, it 
 Is clear It was not adopted into the English lan- 
 guage without opposition, protests and apologies. 
 Mr. Niles says of a notice entitled * Caucus,' In- 
 serted In the Register In 1820 by the Chairman of 
 the Republican Committee of the congress, '' We 
 
THE WORD '' caucus:' 
 
 5 
 
 are sorry to see this awkward word naturalized by 
 a semi-official publication by a member of Con- 
 gress." 
 
 In 1823 the Legislature of Tennessee passed a 
 series of resolutions and sent them to the govern- 
 ors of the several states, to bring about concert of 
 action in opposition to the practice that had held 
 from Jefferson's day, of members of Congress meet- 
 ing in caucus and nominating a candidate for the 
 presidency. The scholarly and critical governor 
 of Georgia, Throop, whose literary tastes were 
 doubtless formed by Addison and his Spectator, 
 was offended at this intrusion of the word caucus 
 into a legislative act by Tennessee, and improved 
 the occasion in his message transmitting the reso- 
 lutions to the Legislature of his own state to con- 
 demn its use. "• The paper purports," he says, " to 
 be a formal act of the Legislature of Tennessee, and 
 its object the denunciation of what it pleases to 
 call a ' caucus ' which may possibly be held at the 
 city of Washington by members of Congress for 
 election purposes. What precise and definite 
 meaning the Legislature of Tennessee designs to 
 attach to the word 'caucus' I cannot conceive. It 
 is not an English word. It is not to be found in 
 our dictionary, and being an uncouth word and of 
 harsh sound I hope it never may. It is not to be 
 found in the constitution and laws of Tennessee, 
 
6 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 and being a mere abstract conception cannot be- 
 come a subject of legislation at all." 
 
 During the agitation in the country over the 
 matter referred to by the Tennessee Legislature, 
 the Senate of the United States were drawn into a 
 discussion of the word upon a remark made by 
 Senator King, of New York, who is reported to 
 have said, *' My attention has been most powerfully 
 attracted by a power which has risen up, which 
 appears to me so terrific that I dare hardly to con- 
 template the effect it may produce : I mean the 
 power which members of Congress have assumed 
 of nominating a president of the United States." 
 Upon this the discussion was taken up by other 
 senators and it soon became general and finally 
 not a little heated, during which some one let fall 
 the word which was in every senator's mind but 
 which was scrupulously tabooed their lips. Without 
 doubt the word falling on the ears of the fervent 
 debators was thrown about as a dead cat is hurled 
 by reckless schoolboys around their playground, 
 until some one, more mindful of proprieties than of 
 the rough sport, points out the offensiveness of the 
 thing, when all cease, and wiping their fingers 
 affect not to have touched it. So here upon the 
 suggestion of a senator all at once thoughtful of 
 the dignity of the body he honored, the main 
 debate was interrupted and the inquiry turned 
 upon the question who first uttered ' caucus ' in 
 
THE WORD " CA UCUSr y 
 
 their presence. Mr. Holmes charged the breach 
 directly upon Mr. King, saying, *' The first use of 
 the word came from the senator from New York." 
 Mr. King promptly denied this with some warmth. 
 Finally, after various exculpations Mr. Haynes of 
 South Carolina brought it home to the veteran 
 senator Mr. Smith, of Maryland, who replied : *' I 
 am unwilling that the discussion of a subject so 
 unprofitable that I am mortified at its being intro- 
 duced, and so little comporting with the dignity of 
 the Senate, should be attributed to me. I regret 
 that the honorable senator from New York should 
 have deemed it proper to introduce it. It is true 
 he qualified it by a new name, ' central power.' 
 However, either my ear deceived me or I heard 
 him use the word caucus, and one member oppo- 
 site took it down. But whether he did or not his 
 meaning was perfectly understood, and if I used it 
 I used it because I wished to give it the known 
 name. I wished to call a spade a spade." 
 
 But all opposition to or delicacy in the use of 
 the word has with time disappeared in the United 
 States and it has found its way to foreign lands. 
 Even the walls of Parliament have echoed it. But 
 occasionally an ear can be found that it offends. 
 A writer recently in the London Times, referring 
 to what had been called a caucus of politicians held 
 at the house of Mr. Gladstone, objected to its 
 being called a caucus, and remarks, '' Caucus is by 
 
8 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 no means a pretty word, much less a sensible one, 
 to be added to our national vocabulary. But if it 
 be adopted at all let us make a right use of it, that 
 is, not to apply it to an open but to a secret meet- 
 ing." The assumption that the word applies exclu- 
 sively to a secret meeting is wrong. Such is not 
 its sole use in this country, nor was it as early as 
 1789, when a local satirist in the line 
 
 " That mob of mobs a caucus to command," 
 
 applies it to a very open and promiscuous gather- 
 ing. Whether the word be a corruption of calk- 
 ers or derived from some guttural tones of the 
 Indian tongue with which the elder Adams may 
 have been familiar cannot certainly be determined 
 now. But in popular speech its meaning and use 
 possess no disturbing uncertainty, and that, it may 
 be remarked, is the chief use of language. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 MEN CHOOSE TO BE CONTROLLED BY POLITICAL ] 
 POWER AND TO BEAR ITS BURDENS. j 
 
 Senator Barbour's opinion that the caucus was 
 first suggested by a member of the Adams family 
 and had its origin in the spirit that gave birth to 
 the American independence, gives more credit to 
 that father of the republic than is claimed for him 
 by his family. Certainly the origin of the system 
 may be traced, though not the word itself, in the 
 laws that govern political action far back of the 
 birth of American governments, or of the discov- 
 ery even of the continents they dominate. 
 
 The proposition that men choose to be controlled 
 by political power and bear its burdens is assur- 
 edly manifest. For however much men may in- 
 sist upon personal freedom and that they are not 
 the subjects of another, yet true it is, when left to 
 themselves they habitually choose to become mem- 
 bers of a political community and amenable to its 
 behests. 
 
 In the fable, the frogs beseech Jupiter to send 
 them a king. These creatures could live and pad- 
 dle in the waters of the pond, given them for 
 
 9 
 
lO THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 their home, restrained if at all in their enjoyment of 
 life only by laws exactly adapted to their welfare 
 and existence. Nevertheless they were discon- 
 tented and desired to choose for themselves, and 
 asked for a king. 
 
 Jupiter throws them a log. At first there is the 
 excitement of fear. The frogs diving out of sight 
 scatter from its presence, but soon reappearing 
 swim about the log, and finally mount and sit con- 
 temptuously upon it. Again their voices go up to 
 Jupiter for a king, a real king. Jupiter listens 
 to the prayer, and to punish them for their folly 
 sends them a stork, which ate many of them. 
 
 This fable indicates the tendency of men and 
 warns against its development. 
 
 The elders of Israel gathered themselves to- 
 gether and came to Samuel, saying, *' Now make us 
 a king to judge us like all nations." The enormity 
 of this request, coming from Israel, the freest na- 
 tion — a nation of republics, indeed — in existence, 
 was inconceivably great. The God of Samuel had 
 fashioned them a peculiar people, had directed all 
 their steps, from Bethel in Canaan to their abode 
 in the fat pastures of Goshen, had sustained them 
 through all their tribulations in Egypt, and had ul- 
 timately brought them up out of a bondage so 
 dark and helpless, that their sons therein, as they 
 came into the world, were strangled by their mas- 
 ters' midwives, to prevent an increase, with no re- 
 
MEN CONTROLLED BY POLITICAL POWER. 1 1 
 
 lief for Israel, unless found in cunning or evasion, 
 and no mercy, unless found in sedgy waters and 
 sheltering bulrushes, to be again a free people in 
 ancient Canaan, possessed of spirit to stand for 
 their offspring sword in hand if need be. The 
 prophet was grieved at the request, but yielded 
 to the express command of Jehovah, who said to 
 him — 
 
 *'They have not rejected 'thee' but 'me' that 
 * I ' should not rule over them. Now show them 
 the manner of the king that shall rule over them." 
 
 '' He will take your sons to be his horsemen ; he 
 will take your daughters to be his cooks ; he will 
 take your fields, your vineyards and olive-yards, 
 even the best of them, and give them to his eu- 
 nuchs. He will take the tenth of your sheep and 
 ye shall be his servants." Nevertheless the people 
 insisted, and said : '' But we will have a king 
 over us," and gathering together at Mizpah they 
 cast lots and Saul was chosen. Thus deliber- 
 ately was their freedom bartered for the rule of a 
 king. The act made a deadly change in the polity 
 of Israel never retrieved. 
 
 Since Mizpah what contest have men waged with 
 greater persistency than this, ' to establish a gov- 
 ernment for themselves, of themselves, by them- 
 selves,' free from the tyranny Mizpah warns them 
 shall be the manner of it ? A continuous struggle, 
 the best minds, the bravest hearts and a long sue- 
 
12 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 cession of prophets and Samuels have fallen mar- 
 tyrs In it. The people shout and lift the yoke to 
 their shoulders, but immediately commence the 
 struggle to throw it off again. Their blood is 
 shed, their sons and daughters, their vineyards 
 and olive-yards are demanded and given up, the 
 power they have installed exhausts them either to 
 maintain or to overthrow. So history reads from 
 Mizpah to this day. It is the government estab- 
 lished and the exactions and sacrifices demanded 
 by it and fought against that makes the history. 
 Every nation as It grows towards freedom repeats 
 the sad refrain. In the freest it is the cause of 
 their political contests though never so bloodless. 
 
 Turn now from the exemplifying history of a 
 race made unancestral by its law of circumcision to 
 that of an ancestral people whose blood flows in 
 English veins — ^athletic barbarians, whose yellow 
 hair and flaming blue eyes were the admiration of 
 the swarthy black-eyed soldiery of Italy. Tacitus 
 says they inhabited Germany, a country so inhos- 
 pitable In climate, aspect and soil that few visited 
 it, and no one would desert benignant Italy to 
 dwell therein unless it was his native land. These 
 barbarians had their political customs, among which 
 was, at stated periods, chosen in the full of the 
 moon, to get together and elect rulers for them- 
 selves and debate the weightier matters of common 
 concern. The historian says they acquired the 
 
MEN CONTROLLED BY POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 13 
 
 vice, '^growing out of their excessive freedom, of 
 consuming several days in going to these assembUes, 
 and going not as men obeying a summons thither, 
 but as men who go of their own will. They also 
 went armed, and sat in convention with their weap- 
 ons in hand. The debates were opened by the 
 chief and most noted warriors and continued by 
 those having a reputation for sagacity and others 
 skilful in debate. The audience listened with 
 great frankness, not to say impressiveness. If the 
 sentiments of the speaker pleased, they clashed 
 their arms together or beat upon their shields. If 
 displeasing they spurned them by uttering a " short 
 and broken roar," and that their voices might swell 
 fuller and harsher by the repercussion they placed 
 their shields above their faces — practices that 
 have descended with their blood to their children, 
 the English and American law-making yeomanry ; 
 somewhat modified perhaps, but bearing those an- 
 cestral marks. 
 
 The times of King Alfred might be drawn upon 
 for illustrations of this subject, but other records 
 will prove of greater pertinence. 
 
 Mild Roger Williams, in 1636, fled from the per- 
 secuting power of the government of Massachu- 
 sett's Bay and found refuge on an island in the 
 Narragansett. Yet the men who appointed that 
 persecuting power were themselves fugitives from 
 tyranny. But now the banished Roger and his co- 
 
14 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 sojourners on the islands and mainland of their 
 secluded retreat, likewise set up a state and install 
 a ruler among them, as the following entry in the 
 earliest records of Rhode Island discloses : 
 
 '' April 2>'^dy 1636. — We whose names are under 
 written doe acknowledge ourselves the loyal sub- 
 jects of his Majestye, King Charles, and in his name 
 doe hereby binde ourselves into a body politick 
 unto his laws according to matters of justice." 
 (Signed) Wm. Hutchinson, George Lawton, and 
 twenty odd others, men who preferred the un- 
 broken wilderness of America to the manner of 
 the kingdom Charles the First ruled and wherein 
 they were born. But they have scarcely erected 
 shelters, much needed for their travel-worn bodies, 
 when they face about and solemnly acknowledge 
 themselves ''loyal subjects to his Majesty," and 
 bind themselves unto his laws, the British Consti- 
 tution, and the customs of his realm, with the 
 reservation, however, ''according to matters of 
 justice." 
 
 Had not these men learned from boyhood that 
 perfect security for their sons and daughters, their 
 fields and vineyards, rested beneath the British 
 Constitution, and that the common law was won- 
 derfully and subtly adapted to give the very right to 
 high and low, and that next to the Lord's Prayer 
 the best was the prayer of the pleading suitor in 
 " his Majesty's High Court of Chancery"? Had 
 
MEN CONTROLLED BY POLITICAL POWER. j ^ 
 
 not this been dinned into their ears from the 
 cradle ? And yet must they, when about to affirm 
 an allegiance nearly severed, feel it should be done 
 with the qualification ''according to matters of 
 justice " ? Did the place, the primeval forest, the 
 smiling waters of the bay, the wild men, wonder- 
 ing spectators of the scene, and whose freedom 
 they spurned, suggest the limitation ? 
 
 And further, the record discloses, '* According 
 to the true intent of the foregoing instrument, we 
 whose names are particularly recorded do agree, 
 jointly or by the major voice, to govern ourselves 
 by the ruler or judge amongst us in all transac- 
 tions for the space of one year, he behaving him- 
 self according to the tenor of the same." Thus, 
 while submitting themselves to a judge or ruler, 
 to be chosen jointly or by the major voice, they 
 have thoughtfully included a check upon his con- 
 duct and powers. The prophecy of Mizpah, visi- 
 ble in the history of every nation, lies before them, 
 and they would circumvent it. Their ruler shall 
 not take their sons and daughters, their olive-yards 
 and vineyards, but shall behave himself ''accord- 
 ing to matters of justice." A very human inven- 
 tion and carefully inaugurated, and in latter times 
 developed throughout the United States w^ith 
 greater particularity in written constitutions, more 
 or less exhaustive and code-like, and by experi- 
 ential legislation. 
 
1 6 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 Having guarded themselves against misconduct 
 on the part of their ruler, they proceed to his elec- 
 tion, and yearly thereafter the record reads, '' We 
 
 have freely made choice of to be ruler or 
 
 judge among us;" and they choose assistant 
 judges for the ''help and ease" of conducting the 
 public business. They come together in town- 
 meeting, now so general in the United States, and 
 discuss and legislate of their affairs thereat. One 
 of the acts of Providence township reads : '' It is 
 agreed by the towne-meeting that after warning 
 given to come to towne-meeting that whoever be 
 wanting above one quarter of an hour after the 
 time appointed by him that gave the warning 
 shall pay the towne for every such default one 
 shilling and sixpence." 
 
 This stringent legislation, requiring each mem- 
 ber of the community not only to attend the town- 
 meeting, but also not be wanting there above fif- 
 teen minutes after the time set for holding the 
 same, is a departure from the practice of the Teu- 
 tonic forefather, upon whose analogous meetings 
 no promptness of attendance was enforced, but 
 delay of proceedings was allowed to accommodate 
 a want of promptness, indulged in that it might 
 appear they came at the will of no other man, 
 which Tacitus says was a vicious practice. 
 
 The town-meeting was the great wheel that set 
 all the machinery of the New-World governments 
 
MEN CONTROLLED BY POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 17 
 
 in motion ; and it was all-important, in order to 
 get the full benefit of the meeting, that the atten- 
 dance of the citizen should be secured. 
 
 It was a political exaction. The body '' politic" 
 demanded it, and determined, without pausing to 
 accommodate the convenience of the citizen, that it 
 should be observed or punishment follow. It may 
 not have worked great grievance to assert this 
 power against a man who had elected to be one 
 of the body politic, and who in harmony with it 
 should accept his portion of the accompanying ex- 
 actions, even to the yielding up his liberty. But 
 the infant state exercised other exacting powers, 
 as is further disclosed from the records of Provi- 
 dence township. **It was agreed that Joshua 
 Verein, upon a breach of covenant for restraining 
 of liberty of conscience, shall be withheld from the 
 libertie of voting till he shall declare the contra- 
 rie." Here a member of the community is disfran- 
 chised, one who, public policy requires, shall actu- 
 ally attend and not be wanting at the town-meet- 
 ing above fifteen minutes after the time set, or be 
 depleted in basket and store. 
 
 Ah, then, Joshua, who fled from England to 
 Salem and from Salem to the Narragansett wil- 
 derness for *' conscience' sake," has for infringing 
 upon it, himself become an object of civil disci- 
 pline ! But what was his offence ? The record 
 says he forbid his wife going so often as she 
 
1 8 THE AMERICAN CA UCUS S YSTEM. 
 
 wished, to hear Roger Williams preach. Indeed, 
 this Joshua, after all his fleeings and sufferings, 
 passes into history a tyrant over conscience. No 
 matter if he honestly thought, and could have 
 shown his good wife neglected the mending and 
 the dairy to sit under the soul-instructive moni- 
 tion of the zealous Roger, he grievously misjudged 
 " libertie of conscience" in forbidding her to hear 
 as many of the great preachers sermons as she 
 hungered for, and now he feels the heavy arm of 
 the body politic for his error ! ! 
 
 But it is not necessary to detain the reader fur- 
 ther on this point. What has been noticed, clearly 
 illustrates the tendency of men to submit them- 
 selves voluntarily to political rule with all the ex- 
 actions attendant upon it. It is said they do so, 
 partly from distrust of themselves and for the ben- 
 efits derived within the rules established and en- 
 forced by the body politic for its own maintenance 
 and for the sake of good order. The fact Is, it is 
 the return, the groping for the ruler rejected at 
 Mizpah. 
 
 The organization of the plantations of Rhode 
 Island, being peculiar and of a spontaneous nature, 
 seems to illustrate the law referred to very clearly. 
 As a general rule the American Colonies were 
 founded under charters granted by the King of 
 Great Britain, with a government organized in ad- 
 vance of actual settlement, and there was no direct 
 
MEN CONTROLLED BY POLLTICAL POWER. 19 
 
 break in authority in their cases. Even the Ply- 
 mouth Colony cannot properly be said to be in all 
 respects an exception to the rule. Besides, it was 
 composed of a body of co-religionists with a sys- 
 tem of church government in force among them, 
 and when they touched the bleak shores of Ply- 
 mouth Bay, and before debarking from the May- 
 flower, they executed a written compact, '' for the 
 glory of God and the advancement of the Chris- 
 tian faith," and ''the better ordering, preservation 
 and furtherance of the ends thereof," in which we 
 may also read, *'we do covenant and combine our- 
 selves together into a body politic," and " by 
 virtue hereof enact, constitute and frame just and 
 equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and of- 
 fices from time to time as shall be thought most 
 convenient for the general good of the colony, 
 unto which we promise all submission and obedi- 
 ence." And they chose John Carver their gov- 
 ernor for one year. 
 
 These people constituted a homogeneous body, 
 and may be said to have merely drawn over them- 
 selves again the covering of civil authority slipped 
 off in their migrations about the continents. Their 
 last act while within the discipline of a British 
 ship was to enter Into and subscribe the compact 
 above quoted from, and therefore It may not be 
 said with as much truth that all civil government 
 had in their case been broken away from as in that 
 of the settlers of Rhode Island. As to them, no 
 
20 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 common bond, not even that of a common relig- 
 ious belief, brought them together. They were 
 fugitives and stragglers from other, to them, op- 
 pressive governments, seeking by the peaceful 
 waters of the Narragansett the freedom they 
 prized above all hardships. Quakers hated and 
 persecuted, Immersionists openly reviled, Roman 
 Catholics and churchmen stigmatized as followers 
 of the scarlet woman, men of no fixed religious be- 
 lief, all found their way thither unattended or in 
 small groups, because they were not tolerated or 
 were unhappy in the settled portions of the Old 
 and New World, and helped to form a new state. 
 And the settlements planted in the wilderness no 
 sooner numbered a score or two of inhabitants 
 each, when, lo ! they are moved, to form a body 
 politic and to govern themselves by the ruler or 
 judge chosen from their number. The govern- 
 ment these people instituted was not modelled 
 after any known government existing, or in history. 
 No allusion is made to the Bible, since they disa- 
 gree among themselves as to its interpretation, and 
 even as to its sacredness ; but its cardinal teach- 
 ing is the corner-stone they select to build upon. 
 The ruler they choose must behave himself accord- 
 ing to matters of justice. With this as their rock 
 they erect a state and declare themselves — weak as 
 they are in numbers, wealth and experience in af- 
 fairs — a body politic, and maintain that position 
 through all the vicissitudes of their stirring history. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DIRECTION OF POLITICAL POWER IS WITH THE 
 
 CAUCUS. 
 
 The towns mentioned so frequently in the early 
 history of New England were in the main portions 
 of the great wilderness occupied by venturesome 
 individuals, who asserted title thereto of, perhaps, 
 an illusory character, but which generally, if not 
 sustained by purchase or gift from the Indians, had 
 at least the might of the stronger arm for its pro- 
 tection. But whatever the title to the soil may 
 have been, these settlements rapidly increased in 
 numbers, and each speedily organized itself into a 
 body politic, the better to manage its internal 
 affairs, which, as already noted, was through a gen- 
 eral assembly of the residents of the territory em- 
 braced, and over which was exercised an entire 
 dominion, as the following further entry in the 
 Rhode Island records illustrate : 
 
 '' It was agreed that William Carpenter and 
 Mary Sweet should pay, in consideration of ground 
 at present granted unto them, two shillings and 
 sixpence apiece. And also Edward Cope, five 
 shillings and sixpence. Item, that all future 
 
 21 
 
22 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 comers, upon the grant of like portion of ground, 
 unto them for their home, each shall pay one shil- 
 ling and sixpence. It was agreed that two men 
 should be deputed to view the lumber on the com- 
 mon, and that such as have occasion to use lumber 
 should repair unto them for their advice and coun- 
 sel to fell timber for their use." 
 
 These gatherings of the people early took the 
 name of '' town-meetings," and have been the 
 theme of constant eulogy by their own and other 
 historians, and especially by the ever recurring 
 theoretical writer. Grave judges also in American 
 courts of last resort, probing for a solid bottom on 
 which to rest their decrees against threatened po- 
 litical concentration or aggressive corporate claims, 
 made on the strength of legislative grants, have 
 found here the desired rock. And without doubt 
 about all there is left to the people of pure democ- 
 racy in the United States — a kind of government 
 inherited from the tribal condition, traces of which 
 may yet be shown in Old England — exists in the 
 town-meeting. 
 
 But governments simple as town-meetings could 
 serve only on limited territory, and with no external 
 matters of moment pressing upon their attention. 
 They gave rise speedily to the more effective rep- 
 resentative form of government, which is indeed 
 the necessary outgrowth of, but not original with, 
 communities of a homogeneous democratic na- 
 
DIRE C TION OF POLITICAL PO WER. 2 3 
 
 ture. All nations have resorted to representa- 
 tion in their affairs, and these colonists were by 
 history and some knowledge of its practice in the 
 British Islands informed about it. The famous 
 Amphyctionic council in the Doric states of Greece, 
 as is known, was composed of deputies or repre- 
 sentatives sent from each of the cities and tribes 
 composing the league, and among the powers pos- 
 sessed by these deputies was that of voting de- 
 crees and regulations applicable to the league 
 generally. 
 
 But the oldest representative governmental as- 
 sembly known in history, the incomparable states- 
 man, Moses, hiding his face before the burning 
 bush, was directed to summon in Egypt. Much 
 has been said and written in defence of the divine 
 right of kings, drawn from the anointing of Saul 
 prior to his election by the people at Mizpah. 
 But the record of the summoning together a rep- 
 resentative political body to constitute the civil 
 authority of the several tribes and families that 
 made up Israel, long antedates the choice of Saul. 
 It also possesses the distinguishing feature of hav- 
 ing originated with Jehovah, and is a form of gov- 
 ernment powerless to steal the hearts of the 
 people away from him and commit them to idola- 
 try, as too often the other forms proved capable 
 of doing. Nor is the command to Moses coupled 
 with the announcement that a flood of evils would 
 
24 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 accompany a compliance therewith, as was the ac- 
 quiescence of Jehovah in the election of a king at 
 Mizpah, but on the contrary, blessings and a great 
 future are given it, a feature too important to 
 have been undesigned. *' Go and gather," is the 
 command, ** the elders of Israel together, and say 
 to them I will bring you out of the affliction of 
 Egypt into a land flowing with milk and honey." 
 " And Moses and Aaron went and gathered to- 
 gether all the elders of the children of Israel, and 
 Aaron laid before them the message the Lord had 
 spoken unto Moses." 
 
 That this was purely a representative assembly 
 admits of no doubt. The Jews at that time num- 
 bered over two millions. They had sprung centu- 
 ries before from the loins of twelve brothers. 
 They were not a nation ; they were a people di- 
 vided into twelve parts, each part or tribe choos- 
 ing, by some regulation of a democratic nature, 
 men to look after their affairs, who were called 
 elders. These men, by the efforts of Moses and 
 Aaron, were assembled together to determine 
 whether the twelve tribes should break away from 
 Egypt, — the land that had been the home of their 
 race for generations and where they all were born, 
 — and to go to distant Canaan and expel by force 
 of arms the nations inhabiting it, according to the 
 message laid before them. Certainly that was a 
 remarkable duty, and cast upon no prince or king, 
 
DIRECTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 25 
 
 but upon the representatives of millions of men. 
 They met and considered the message *and gave 
 their consent. Moses sought Pharaoh and per- 
 mission from him to depart into the desert. Sub- 
 sequently, in the wilderness, the Jews were more 
 perfectly organized into a nation preserving the 
 representative form of government, which was 
 made still more perfect upon the allotment of 
 Canaan to the different tribes under Joshua. 
 
 A representative government not being new nor 
 strange to American colonists, they adopt it and 
 form a General Court by representatives chosen 
 from the several towns, who confined themselves 
 to such matters as concerned the communities at 
 large. 
 
 But with the election of persons to office came 
 the necessity of making choice of the man, and 
 with that came also the need of concentration 
 prior to balloting for the one selected. 
 
 Mr. Hildreth, in his history of the United States, 
 mentions that, at the May election in the Ply- 
 mouth Colony in 1635, the deputies from the 
 several towns came together the day before and 
 agreed upon Haynes for governor, who was duly 
 chosen. This, the historian says, is the first in- 
 stance of the caucus system on record, and adds, 
 that the proceeding offended Ludlow, who, on 
 account of it, called the validity of the election 
 in question. Whereupon the citizens retaliated 
 
26 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 by electing Billingham instead of Ludlow for dep- 
 uty governor. But the historian is in error in as- 
 suming that was the first instance of the caucus 
 system on record, for we have only to turn to 
 the ancient record already freely drawn upon — 
 which, as it is the oldest and ablest history of 
 human affairs, is both an interesting and instruct- 
 ive study — to find an instance of the use of the 
 caucus system as it is now called, and a political 
 campaign directed by it, with all the accessories so 
 well known and used in modern times by politi- 
 cians to a successful conclusion, and which also 
 offended the defeated aspirant, who protested by 
 an aptly illustrative allegory. 
 
 Abimelech, one of the many sons of Gideon, 
 desired the judgeship vacated by the death of his 
 father. He had no special fitness for the place, 
 or reason to expect the office. But, determined 
 to possess it, he applied himself to that end with 
 all the arts of a modern demagogue and self- 
 seeker. He was one of the tribe of Manasseh, 
 and it was necessary for him to secure a follow- 
 ing among the Shechemites. Whereupon, tak- 
 ing advantage of the kinship of his mother, who 
 was a Shechemite, he went to Shechem, and 
 '' communed," made a caucus, with her brethren 
 and all the family of his mother's father, to in- 
 duce them to solicit votes for him in that city. 
 
 An instance of a powerful family meeting in 
 
DIRECTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 27 
 
 caucus is related by Hammond in his political his- 
 tory of New York. Speaking of the Livingstons, 
 who were originally zealous Federalists, but w^ho 
 opposed General Hamilton, he says : **The family, 
 one evening in 1790, had a meeting for the pur- 
 pose of deliberating on the subject, and the result 
 was that the next morning every one of them took 
 his stand as a Republican." 
 
 Abimelech was not less successful with the 
 family of his mother, and of his '' mother's father." 
 Their jealousy of others, and the promise of place 
 and power under his administration, were then as 
 now effective. The Scripture represents Abime- 
 lech clinching his proposals with, '' Remember, I am 
 of your bone and flesh " — the stock argument of 
 promise and division used from his day to this by 
 all such aspirants. Suffice that Abimelech secured 
 an advantageous following, men who not only 
 solicited, button-holed the Shechemites and " in- 
 clined " them unto him, but who also secured a 
 campaign fund by an assessment of three hundred 
 shekels, with which he hired '\ vain and light 
 persons " — secured the floating vote — to follow 
 him. A very thoroughly worked canvass from bot- 
 tom up, a modern politician would say ; and when 
 the people assembled by the pillar that was in 
 Shechem, Abimelech received their suffrages and 
 was elected. But a protest went up from Jotham, 
 who laid bare the real nature of all such political 
 
28 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 work by the fable of the trees that went forth to 
 anoint a king over them. They appealed in turn 
 to the olive, the fig and the vine to become their 
 king, but each refused. And then they went to the 
 bramble, which consented on the condition the 
 trees would put their trust in its shadow, or fire 
 should go out of its branches and consume the 
 best of them, even the cedars of Lebanon. 
 
 In the exigencies of political affairs how fre- 
 quently it happens that some person, a very Abim- 
 elech among men, obtains over others as much 
 better than himself as the olive and fig are better 
 than the bramble, place and power which he can- 
 not long retain against the better sense of the 
 community, except it be possible for him to debase 
 them to the level of a trust in his shadow, or for 
 his destructive jealousy to go forth as fire from the 
 branches and overwhelm those whose worth threat- 
 ens his position. 
 
 It would be very difificult indeed to assign a 
 date, even approximately, to the birth of the 
 caucus system. But that it has long been in the 
 past as it is now an instrument, potent for good 
 and evil, indeed, ''king" in political matters, is 
 apparent. 
 
 If the family is the basis of all civil government, 
 as many publicists insist, the multiplication of 
 families necessitated a union among them under a 
 common head, and a choice of the common head 
 
DIRECTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 29 
 
 Introduced the practice of selecting one Individual 
 to fill that office from among a number, a necessity 
 constantly recurring in the progress of events. 
 And with it came the need of consultation or 
 caucusing to bring about unity of action by those 
 who favored the selection of some one individual 
 in preference to another. The policy or direction 
 to be given to the affairs of a community by the 
 chieftain so chosen would also come before these 
 conferences, especially if full freedom of choice ex- 
 isted ; and where it did not exist, not unfrequently 
 there would arise caucusing '* of honorable danger- 
 ous consequences " in connection with the individ- 
 ual holding, or with the one to be elevated to the 
 chief power. Political writers of the past uni- 
 formly recognize the early existence of the caucus 
 in affairs, among whom and not least in very able 
 company is the ex-president John Adams, who 
 writes: ''Caucuses of patricians, caucuses of ple- 
 beians always prevailed at Rome, and in all other 
 free countries." And with no less truth he writes 
 in reference to the service of the caucus in the 
 United States : '' Our revolution was effected by 
 caucus, the Federal constitution was formed by 
 caucus, and the Federal administration was sus- 
 tained by it." And in a letter to Roger Sherman 
 upon the method of choosing the president by 
 electors appointed for the purpose by the people 
 or by the Legislature of the states, he says : '' All] 
 
30 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 these complications of machinery, these wheels 
 within wheels — imperia within imperia — have not 
 been sufficient to satisfy the people. They have 
 invented a balance to all balances in their cau- 
 cuses : state caucuses, district caucuses, town cau- 
 cuses, parish caucuses and Sunday caucuses at 
 church doors ; and in these aristocratical caucuses 
 elections are determined." 
 
 This so general application and development of 
 the caucus is as yet peculiar to the United States. 
 Here it took its name " caucus," a word, as we 
 have seen, of American origin, and deemed here a 
 fit, but since its adoption a much abused term, to 
 designate a meeting for conference of citizens en- 
 gaged upon party work, to further the measures 
 they advocate by the choice of a public officer who 
 will carry them into effect, or to bring support to 
 a political measure which they favor. 
 
I 
 
 IV. 
 
 WHAT GIVES THE CAUCUS ITS AUTHORITY. 
 
 The first glimpse we have in history of the cau- 
 cus, as before noted, shows a self-seeker in posses- 
 sion using it to secure for himself an office within 
 the gift of the people of Shechem. And the de- 
 scription given of the Boston Caucus Club shows 
 its members engaged in filling the city offices with 
 selections from their own number. Also Hildreth's 
 reference to the caucus leaves it uncertain that 
 it was not a combination of men, made for the 
 purpose of securing the election of a favorite to 
 the governorship of a colony. 
 
 From these and many other instances of its like 
 employment, that might be drawn from past and 
 recent times, and which it would be affectation to 
 cite, an odious reputation for want of disinterested- 
 ness in its objects and impartiality in its methods 
 has attached to the caucus, which gives occasion 
 for fair-dealing men to entertain an ill opinion of 
 it. But a careful examination of ths source of its 
 power discloses this odious selfishness and partial- 
 ity to be the weakness of the caucus and not 
 its strength, and should be avoided. 
 
 ERSITT ) 
 
3 2 THE A MERICAN CA UCUS S YSTEM. 
 
 It was a cardinal rule of one of the most saga- 
 cious of American politicians, to go into caucus in 
 the support of measures, primarily and secondarily, 
 in behalf of men. For, when there is no principle 
 at stake, the contest sinks to the canvass of indi- 
 vidual benefits, and unavoidably to intrigue and Im- 
 portunate appeal, accompanied by backbiting, slan- 
 der and deception. To use his own words : '' Every 
 old politician knows a caucus is always provocative 
 of animosities, confusion and disgrace, when got up 
 for the support of persons' Ins tead of thing s. To 
 this rule not an exception has come within my 
 knowledge since 1797, when I first had a right to 
 assume and take upon myself the part of a politi- 
 cian, and I was always one of the most zealous ad- 
 herents to the proceedings adopted, when meas- 
 ures are regarded, but never so acted in favor of 
 persons alone, nor will I until I shall fix a price on 
 my vote." 
 
 The position of this political sage will be better 
 understood upon a brief consideration of the influ- 
 ence principles have in the formation and conduct 
 of parties, which finds its apposite illustration In 
 American colonial and federal history. 
 
 Prior to the Revolutionary War, the policy of 
 the Crown of England was designed to establish 
 Its power and prerogatives, and to repress all 
 growth of democracy In the colonies ; hence the 
 colonists were divided Into two main parties, to 
 
WHAT GIVES THE CAUCUS ITS AUTHORITY. 33 
 
 which were given the names Whig and Tory — 
 names borrowed from England, but distinguish- 
 ing there advocates of political principles and 
 measures not entirely applicable to the colonists. 
 This division into parties was further aided by 
 conditions that lay below Parliamentary decrees 
 and imperial rescripts. The colonists were Bible- 
 reading, and thinking people. They saw that the 
 doctrine of the divine right of kings was not the 
 freedom of the masses, and intensely realized that 
 fact. To secure liberty was to them a duty and 
 their mission. And this provoked a contest with 
 the bonds and withes that king-craft cunningly in 
 its own behalf casts about the subject, and which 
 custom, moss-grown, and education, perverted by 
 superstition, had sanctioned. 
 
 Necessarily, men who have been drawn together 
 to plant a society in a wilderness, that should live 
 and supplant the wilderness, and be destined to 
 become a great and free nation, would resist all 
 checks upon their freedom attempted by interests 
 so entirely at war with it. The colonists may 
 not have foreseen the great republic that now 
 stands upon the foundations they so wisely and so 
 persistently labored to lay ; and may not have built 
 in view of such an edifice, but, in the sense that 
 those who adhere to a great truth and struggle in 
 its behalf, guard it from overgrowing parasites, 
 until all men come to hail it as vital in human 
 
34 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 affairs, may be said to have foreseen the blessings, 
 however glorious and abundant in after days in its 
 full fruition showering from it, so those pioneers 
 of the republic may be justly honored as the proph- 
 ets of the day that saw it a fixed fact, and taking 
 its place among the nations of the earth the freest, 
 because the truthfulest of them all. 
 
 It is probable the colonists drew some inspira- 
 tion from the freedom possessed by the savages in 
 the forests about them, and were further animated 
 by it to preserve on the soil on which it had ex- 
 isted for unnumbered ages, somewhat of its bless- 
 ings for the future. They constantly complained 
 to the Crown of laws that infringed upon liberty. 
 and petitioned for laws that would secure its en- 
 joyment to all alike. They stoutly repudiated 
 that theory of society and government, which 
 makes both creatures of human devising, the gift 
 of some exalted donor having a treasury out of 
 which he may select and grant to men, as privi- 
 leges, their rights. 
 
 Such was the contest maintained on the one 
 part by the Whigs and opposed by those who be- 
 lieved on the contrary. In the divine right of kings, 
 and gave ready support to all the measures of the 
 Crown, including those which subverted freedom 
 and imposed servitude. 
 
 These views, so radically different, affected every 
 individual colonist. Every colonial act, every 
 
WHAT GIVES THE CAUCUS ITS AUTHORITY. 
 
 35 
 
 choice of a public officer was determined by them. 
 Majorities were gathered and minorities over- 
 ridden at the caucus, hustings and ballot:-box, be- 
 cause of them ; and when the contest could no 
 longer be kept within the limits of public discus- 
 sion, the ballot-box and legislative halls, war broke 
 forth and armies were formed, and men offered 
 their lives to make those principles the policy of 
 the colonial government. The doctrine, the govern- 
 ment is not a fountain of blessings, but is the con- 
 centrated might of the people, to be directed to re- 
 sist and defeat every infringement of the God- 
 given blessings freedom possesses for them, be- 
 came the battle-cry of a nation. 
 
 With the war came the death of the Tory party. 
 The name itself became a word of reproach, nor 
 was there room given to neutrals. The contest was 
 vital and whoever was not for the patriotic Whigs 
 was against them, and was waged until the stipula- 
 tion of the Crown of Great Britain, forever renounc- 
 ing all further claim of dominion over the colo- 
 nies, concluded it. This to the Whigs was a joy- 
 ful establishment of their principles, and for England 
 a wise recognition of their validity, fruitful in good 
 results. Always applicable is the truth, that both 
 the oppressor and the oppressed are, by the cessa- 
 tion of oppression, again placed in right relation 
 to each other, as a bent bow when relieved returns to 
 the line of its grain. The war ended, the argument 
 
36 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 of blood gave place to peaceable discussion among 
 the colonists, of measures of freedom which their 
 sacrifices had secured for them. They sat about 
 uniting and formulating with greater completeness 
 their powers, groping their way to that end in the 
 light of such knowledge and experience in state- 
 craft as the world possessed. But these proceed- 
 ings broke up the Whig party of the war. The 
 union of the people, fusing together, as it were, 
 the citizens of the colonies into one homogeneous 
 nation to supplant the existing confederation of 
 sovereign states, was advocated by a portion of the 
 Whigs, who took the name of Federalists, and all 
 others who opposed that policy, in whole or in part, 
 were called Anti-Federalists, names borne through- 
 out the contest that evolved and established the 
 Federal Constitution, and until its growing popu- 
 larity caused the opposition to take the name 
 *' Republicans." But all parties worked for the 
 same result and earnestly considered ways and 
 means that would best secure individual and na- 
 tional rights, free from infringement not only 
 through foreign Injustice, but domestic perverse- 
 ness as well. How far and yet how imperfectly 
 they succeeded the Federal Constitution and its 
 several amendments, the unnumbered state papers 
 promulgated In regard to it, the interminable leg- 
 islative debates over Its provisions, the volumes 
 of judicial Interpretations of its terms, the never- 
 
WHA T GIVES THE CA UCUS ITS A UTHORITY. 
 
 37 
 
 ending discussion through a free press active in 
 gathering to itself all mooted matters, and a series 
 of wars the longest and most lamentable, a civil 
 war, sufficiently answer. Men find the causes of 
 infringement upon their rights so numerous and 
 deftly improved upon, that any expectation of a 
 final end to them and of party spirit and party 
 measures engendered by them, must be postponed 
 to the indefinite. 
 
 If one thinks otherwise, let him consider, among 
 many that might be suggested, these questions, 
 now before the public or soon to arise for settle- 
 ment. These of foreign concern : *' Are open nat- 
 urally navigable waters free ways to the ships of all 
 nations ? Are sea fisheries common to all comers 
 to take from, cure and market? Are Isthmean 
 canals connecting open seas, highways for all the 
 world or only for the nation constructing them ? " 
 And these of domestic concern : " Should inter- 
 state lines of railroads and telegraphs be under pub- 
 lic control ? Should Congress provide all the cur- 
 rency of the country, metallic and paper? Should 
 customs upon imports be abolished ? Should a 
 free and compulsory education of all the people be 
 required and enforced by Congress ? Should the 
 sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, be pro- 
 hibited by Congress?" If the reader takes, as he 
 probably would, the affirmative or negative of such 
 questions he will naturally wish to see the govern- 
 
38 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 ment act in accordance with his views. To accom- 
 plish this he must be able to select men for gov- 
 ernmental places who agree with him in that respect. 
 When the question *' whether at all or at any time 
 the freedom of the negro could be infringed upon 
 — even altogether taken away from him," was before 
 the people, the anti-slavery men could not consist- 
 ently go into caucus and advocate the nomination 
 of men for public office, even of a minor character, 
 who held pro-slavery views. So it must necessarily 
 be with the advocates and opponents of every po- 
 litical measure, if it be of sufficient importance to 
 rally parties about it. From the foregoing the 
 force of the rule of conduct laid down by the ven- 
 erable mentor before quoted, becomes apparent. 
 Indeed it is vital for the success or defeat of a 
 measure that no one should go into a caucus but 
 in reference to it, and abide by the caucus pro- 
 ceedings only, when the party measures are re- 
 garded ; but never, when to elevate men to office 
 alone is considered, unless he is prepared to '' fix 
 a price upon his vote." For in the latter case 
 the very essentials of party organization are sur- 
 rendered up, and instead of a party man interested 
 in the policy of his country, he sinks to be a fol- 
 lower of the fortunes of an individual. Public in- 
 terests are forgotten in the selfishness and partial- 
 ity developed in the interests of his candidate's suc- 
 cess. On the other hand, when measures are re- 
 
WHAT GIVES THE CAUCUS ITS AUTHORITY. ng 
 
 garded, and men are selected for office solely with 
 regard to the welfare of the measure, there is a 
 hearty and earnest union of all of like convictions 
 as to those measures, with a very charitable con- 
 sideration of the personal characteristics of the 
 men nominated, public sentiment, that seldom 
 errs aiding the selection of fit men to whom the 
 care of the measure, to make it, the governmental 
 policy, may be entrusted. But to return. 
 
 The Federalists having overcome all opposition 
 and put the national government in operation, 
 dominated, during Washington's and John Adams' 
 administrations, its entire policy. But they were 
 criticized with unmerited severity by their oppo- 
 nents, who finally succeeded in supplanting them 
 through the medium of the caucus. Senator 
 Smith, in the course of the historical debate before 
 referred to, reminded the opponents of the caucus 
 of the fact and gave a chapter of its history. *' I 
 am surprised," he said, '*at the course taken by the 
 member from South Carolina, Mr. Hayne. He 
 was too young to know the extreme difficulty the 
 Republican party had to encounter, and the dan- 
 ger it has been exposed to by attempts calculated 
 to create schism, that might, by dividing, have 
 exposed it to great dangers, which in my humble 
 opinion have been mainly obviated by the caucus 
 system. Nor am I surprised at the opposition of 
 the gentleman from New York, Mr. King. That 
 
40 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 gentleman was a leading chief of the Federal 
 party, and no doubt thinks what I know, that owing 
 to the caucus system his party was prostrated and 
 the Republican party brought into power. I ad- 
 here to the system which rendered such essential 
 service. Upon this I act as a party man, and have 
 no hesitation in saying that I wish to keep my 
 party in power ; and I believe the caucus system the 
 most efficient means therefor. A caucus was held 
 in Philadelphia and nominated Jefferson (1796) 
 against Adams, but Adams won. The next time 
 the caucus won and Jefferson was elected ; so with 
 Madison, so with Monroe, only the Federalists 
 opposed it because it broke them up and defeated 
 them." 
 
 No one questioned the senator's statement, and 
 it may be accepted as historically correct, and as 
 proof of the power of the caucus in directing party 
 measures and securing their success. 
 
 The overthrow of the Federal party referred to 
 was so complete that it never recovered, but strug- 
 gling, passed reluctantly to the keeping of history. 
 It carried with it a long roll of the *' fathers," men 
 who early saw the wrongs of all the colonies in the 
 wrongs of one of them, who gave the work of their 
 lives to unite the colonies into one independent 
 nation ; and who laid down the political power so 
 long entrusted to them, with a foreign policy so 
 firmly established for peacefulness, candor and 
 
WHAT GIVES THE CAUCUS ITS AUTHORITY. 41 
 
 fair dealing, that subsequent perverseness has not 
 destroyed it ; and an internal policy so universal, 
 far-reaching and beneficial in its effects that blind 
 opposition has not choked it. Thus they earned 
 for themselves the paternal appellation, *' Fathers 
 of the Republic," given and honored throughout 
 the land, and beyond the seas even. Indeed, so 
 well adapted to the young nation was the Federal 
 policy, that looking back over the years gone since 
 their expulsion from power, it may not be denied 
 that their opponents and successors erred most 
 when departing from it, and succeeded best when 
 making that policy their own. Take a few ex- 
 amples, which show also the influence and longev- 
 ity of political principles, of real worth. 
 
 The Federalists insisted upon a navy and a 
 school of marine. The Republicans, led by Jeffer- 
 son, opposed it even to the extent of paying trib- 
 ute to the Algerine pirates in default of a navy. 
 *' Millions," the Federalists urged, '' for defence, 
 but not one cent for tribute ; " but Jefferson, as 
 president, sent the small fleet of frigates and 
 sloops of war built through the persistence of the 
 Federalists, to the Mediterranean, which extermi- 
 nated the pirates and established the glory of the 
 American flag and the assurance that it was the 
 symbol of a nation, upon the sea. Again the Fed- 
 eralists saw, notwithstanding the passions that had 
 been engendered by the War of Independence 
 
42 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 and the bull-dog diplomacy of England, that it 
 was best for Americans to come to a fair under- 
 standing with the mother country, and to entirely 
 avoid all alliances with the French Directory and 
 the usurping Bonaparte. This policy, however, 
 was made unpopular by the attacks of the Anti- 
 Federalists, and contributed the main argument 
 for the overthrow of that great and all but invin- 
 cible party. But the outcome was, that the Re- 
 publicans, not fitted by their party's creed to em- 
 ulate the firmness of the Federals, and unable to 
 change their policy, submitted to the most hu- 
 miliating insults from Bonaparte, even to the con- 
 fiscation of American ships and the execution of 
 American seamen, on the ground they were British 
 subjects employed on American vessels, and finally 
 to a war with England and the sacrifice of 
 thirty thousand lives and a hundred millions of 
 money for no additional gain to the nation beyond 
 that already secured by the treaty of 1 783. 
 
 Also the Federalists established a national bank 
 that aided in funding the national debt and in 
 giving the young nation credit abroad, and secured 
 over an immense country at home, ill provided 
 with means of intercommunication, an uniform ex- 
 change and currency. Upon this bank the Anti- 
 Federalists made unconditional war and ultimately 
 overthrew it, and let in a system of state banks, ill- 
 regulated exchange and depreciated currency, that 
 
WHAT GIVES THE CAUCUS ITS AUTHORITY. 
 
 43 
 
 went by various names, some odd but doubtless 
 characteristic, as '* red-dog," ''wild-cat," ''alligator 
 hide," etc., evils that did not entirely disappear 
 until the exigencies of the late Civil War re- 
 instated a national currency. The Federalists in- 
 sisted upon the self-preservative nature of the 
 Constitution, and that the nation was indivisible : 
 a policy that Jefferson antagonized, insisting, the 
 nation was a union of states, severable at the will 
 of any one of them. But Jackson had to maintain 
 the Federal doctrine against the schism of South 
 Carolina in 1832-33, and Lincoln also in the war of 
 1861-65. The Federalists insisted upon an inter- 
 pretation of the Constitution which admitted of 
 remedial measures ; their opponents insisted upon 
 a strict construction and found slight warrant 
 for a donation from the national treasury of 
 $15,000, in aid to some refugees from the West 
 India Islands, cast helpless and destitute upon the 
 charity of Baltimore. But Jefferson purchased 
 Louisiana, the mouths of the Mississippi and the 
 immense territory beyond, inaugurating the policy 
 of annexation of contiguous territory until the 
 national domain has reached the Pacific. 
 
 But neither the wisdom nor the inconsistencies 
 of parties Is here for discussion ; it is the influ- 
 ence of principles in the formation of parties and 
 in giving caucus Its powers. Enough apparently 
 has been said to show that parties as opposed to 
 
44 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 clans or chieftainships are organized upon meas- 
 ures that survive, though party is overthrown and 
 leadership fails. Men believing the principles of 
 their party to be best for the country, cannot 
 surrender them up to selfish interests in the success 
 of an individual without stultification or crime. 
 They must be governed by their principles in all 
 their political actions, and more especially when 
 seeking to unite with others of like conviction 
 through the medium of the caucus. 
 
 Still a party, like an army, must have leaders, 
 selected, however, not with a view to the amount of 
 plunder they are capable of looting from the pub- 
 lic for themselves and their followers, but to pre- 
 serve the organization and carry into effect, when 
 the opportunity occurs, the measures of the party. 
 ^ It is not always the leaders. It may be observed, 
 who are elected to public office. Many a '' War- 
 wick" in American politics has lived rejoicing In 
 his influence and power " behind the throne" 
 without ever having held office. But whether the 
 leaders are candidates for office or not, they cease 
 to be leaders when failing to advocate party meas- 
 ures at the caucus with a view to Impress them 
 upon the policy of the nation. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CAUCUS NOMINATIONS COMPARED WITH SELF-NOMI- 
 NATIONS. 
 
 William H. Seward, wending his way a trav- 
 eller among the hills and valleys of the Blue Ridge 
 region of Virginia, reflects, " The caucus barely re- 
 ceived by her politicians will in the end abolish 
 her glorious system of self-nominations — the true 
 secret of Virginia's political independence and 
 power." The philosophic statesman and politician 
 here contrasts the caucus system for appointing 
 party candidates for elective offices, as conducted, 
 especially in New York, under his own observa- 
 tion, with the practice of self-nominations in those 
 states where the wealth, the leisure and the politi- 
 cal training was with the large landowners, gener- 
 ally slaveholders, from among whom appeared, as 
 elections drew near, gentlemen offering themselves 
 as candidates for the office to be filled. 
 
 The sentiment in those communities was such as 
 to invite men to come forward and solicit, person- 
 ally, votes. Indeed the gentry encouraged mem- 
 bers of their caste to seek, to the exclusion of all 
 others, office as an employment. The caucus an- 
 
 45 
 
46 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 tagonlzed such a system and opened the door to 
 the electors to select the candidate from the labor- 
 ing as well as from the capital-owning class ; 
 while under the system of self-nominations the 
 choice of the person was practically the concern of 
 slaveholders only. These, although divided into 
 parties in common with their brethren elsewhere, 
 managed, in the interest of their caste, to confine 
 the candidates for public office to themselves, and 
 to men holding rarely if ever other than local 
 views. They cultivated *' stump " oratory of the 
 most brilliant and effective kind, which with so- 
 cial manners to match, made them in the peri- 
 odical election contests all but irresistible with 
 the masses. The *' parliamenteering " practices, 
 brought over with the settlement of the country 
 from Old England, were in those sections in 
 many respects maintained, particularly in regard 
 to exclusiveness in the selection of candidates for 
 office and the methods of preserving it. A glance 
 at English practices will best illustrate this. 
 
 The English borough system admitted in many 
 cases of seating in the House of Commons by a 
 great landholder, a friend or retainer, without con- 
 sulting in the slightest respect the views of the 
 residents of the borough. In others, where there 
 was considerable population and some wealth, the 
 gentry determined the matter among themselves ; 
 while still other boroughs were sharolv and inHnc. 
 
CA UCUS NOMINA TIONS. Ay 
 
 triously canvassed. But In all of them the gentry 
 held the commanding position, securing to their 
 own class or retainers almost exclusively the rep- 
 resentation in the House. If talent in other 
 classes was regarded, it was owing to the patron- 
 age of the great. Thus, Edmund Burke owed to 
 the patronage of a large landholder his advent 
 in the House of Commons, as did also the histo- 
 rian Macaulay, and in present times, William E. 
 Gladstone. They were originally *' pocket bor- 
 ough " members, that Is, they were returned to 
 represent boroughs carved out of the lands of their 
 patrons, who gave them their seats through friend- 
 ship, or for the benefit they or their party would 
 receive from their talents. In cases where a bor- 
 ough was of that size and importance that admitted 
 of a canvass of the electors, ambitious men came 
 forward, or were Invited by friends ** to stand," — 
 the raw edge being taken off, sometimes, by the 
 pre-arranged Invitation, — and solicit votes as can- 
 didates for the office. 
 
 Edmund Burke, after attracting attention as the 
 representative, by the friendship of Lord Verney, 
 of the pocket borough of Wendover, went to 
 Bristol, certain gentlemen advising him to do so, 
 and entered the canvass in his own behalf as a can- 
 didate to represent them In the House of Com- 
 mons. This was in October, 1774. Being an ac- 
 complished orator, and having well known sympa- 
 
48 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 thies for the American colonies, they beHeved he 
 might carry with him the shippers and merchants 
 of that port. He reached Bristol after the polls 
 had been open for five days, but going directly 
 to work he addressed the electors : '* Gentlemen, 
 I am come hither to solicit in person that favor 
 which my friends have hitherto endeavored to 
 procure for me," and continuing so eloquently 
 and effectively that great enthusiasm was aroused 
 in his favor. Indeed his colleague (Bristol was 
 entitled to two members), who, by the way, was 
 a native of New York, could only say when 
 called upon to address the electors in his turn, 
 *' Gentlemen, I say ditto to Mr. Burke, again I say 
 ditto," earning for himself from that moment the 
 life-long soubriquet "■ Ditto Cruger," and becoming 
 the hero of a political anecdote ; but the same 
 gentleman, after the polls were closed and he and 
 Mr. Burke had been declared elected, returned 
 thanks by saying, '' his rule of conduct as a mem- 
 ber of the House of Commons should be their 
 will, and that in all things he should vote as 
 they directed." This caused Mr. Burke to say in 
 his closing address, '' Parliament was not a con- 
 gress of ambassadors from different and hostile 
 interests, which interests each must maintain as 
 an agent and advocate, against other agents and 
 advocates ; but Parliament is a deliberative as- 
 sembly of one nation with one interest, that 
 
CAUCUS NOMINATIONS. ^g 
 
 of the whole, where, not local purposes, not 
 local prejudices ought to guide, but the general 
 good resulting from the general reason of the 
 whole ; " and while the opinions of his constituents 
 a ''representative ought always rejoice to hear 
 and ought always most seriously consider," yet, 
 ** authoritative instructions, mandates issued which 
 the member is bound blindly and implicitly to 
 obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary 
 to the clearest convictions of his judgment and 
 conscience, these are things utterly unknown to 
 the laws of this land, and which arise from a fun- 
 damental mistake of the whole order and tenor of 
 our constitution" — principles which have been 
 more or less discussed in the United States. In 
 the first Congress a resolution was introduced to 
 amend the Constitution so as to require members 
 of the congress to obey the instructions of their 
 constituents, but it failed of much support. The- 
 mere self-nominee, however, is through the nature 
 of his offer a local representative, depending upon 
 local views for his popularity and votes ; a truth 
 that Mr. Burke became witness to in after days. 
 
 John Q. Adams, when United States senator, 
 finding himself at variance with the Legislature 
 that appointed him to that office resigned it, that 
 the people of Massachusetts might have an oppor- 
 tunity of electing a man to his seat who would 
 carry out their will. And there are instances of 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 public men refusing to resign their office when re- 
 quested to by the power appointing them. And 
 also instances of men refusing to obey the Instruc- 
 tions of their constituents. General Cass, when 
 senator, refused to obey the Instructions of the 
 Legislature of Michigan. James Buchanan, when 
 serenaded after his nomination to the presidency by 
 the Democratic party, replied, " Gentlemen, two 
 weeks ago I should have made you a longer speech, 
 but now I have been placed upon a platform of 
 which I most heartily approve and that can speak 
 for me. Being the representative of the great 
 Democratic party, and not simply James Buchanan, 
 I must square my conduct according to the platform 
 of that party and insert no new plank nor take one 
 out of It." Which speech his witty opponents com- 
 pressed into *' I am no longer James Buchanan, I 
 am the Cincinnati platform." So faithful was Bu- 
 chanan to the pro-slavery spirit and policy of his 
 party, that when secession threatened, he could find 
 in It no warrant for coercing a state : in other 
 words, for preserving the unity of the nation — an 
 instance where, to achieve success, a great party 
 surrendered itself to the demands of a local Inter- 
 est, and found In its representative a blind adherent 
 and executive of Its behests. 
 
 Mr. Burke, In his address at Bristol, discloses 
 some of the practices at the hustings, showing very 
 clearly the personal nature of his canvass for Bris- 
 
CA UCUS NOMINA TIONS. 5 I 
 
 tol votes. Some question was raised by the de- 
 feated candidate over the legaHty of certain votes 
 cast, to the number of two thousand. Mr. Burke, 
 arguing in favor of those votes, contrasted his own 
 conduct with that of his opponent, saying among 
 other things, ** I was brought hither under the dis- 
 advantage of being unknown, even by sight, to any 
 of you. No previous canvass had been made for 
 me. I was put in nomination after the poll was 
 opened. I did not appear until it was far ad- 
 vanced. If under all these accumulated disadvan- 
 tages your good opinion has carried me to this 
 happy point of success, you will pardon me if I can 
 only say to you collectively as I said to you indi- 
 vidually, simply and plainly, ' I thank you.' I am 
 obliged to you. I am not insensible of your kind- 
 ness I do not imagine you find me rash in 
 
 delivering myself or very forward in troubling you. 
 From the beginning to the end of the election I 
 have kept silence in all matters of discussion. I 
 have never asked a question of a voter on the 
 other side, or supported a doubtful vote on my 
 
 own I stood on the hustings, except when 
 
 I gave thanks to those who favored me with their 
 votes, less like a candidate than an unconcerned 
 spectator of a public proceeding." But the gentle- 
 man, ''who so long and so earnestly solicited your 
 votes thinks proper to deny that a great part of 
 you have any votes to give Here is an at- 
 
52 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 tempt for a general massacre of suffrages, an at- 
 tempt by a promiscuous carnage of friends and 
 foes to exterminate above two thousand votes, in- 
 clusive of seven hundred polled for the gentle- 
 man himself, who now complains, and who would 
 destroy the friends whom he has obtained, only 
 because he cannot obtain as many of them as he 
 
 wishes I do not pretend to lay down any 
 
 rules of decorum for other gentlemen ; . . . but 
 how should I appear to the voters themselves ? 
 If I had gone round to the citizens entitled to 
 freedom and seized them by the hand, ' Sir, I 
 humbly beg your vote ; I shall be eternally thank- 
 ful ; may I hope for the honor of your support ? 
 Well, come, we shall see you at the Council 
 House.' If I were then to deliver them to my 
 managers, pack them into tallies, vote them off in 
 court, and when I heard from the bar, ' Such an 
 one only,' and ' Such an one forever,' * He is my 
 man,' ' Thank you, sir, that's an honest fellow — 
 how is your good family ?' whilst these words were 
 hardly out of my mouth, if I had wheeled around 
 at once and said, * Get you gone, you pack of 
 worthless fellows, you have no votes ; you ought 
 never to have been produced at this election ' . . . 
 gentlemen, I should make a strange figure if my 
 conduct had been of that sort." 
 
 But Mr. Burke's adroit turning the popular sen- 
 timent against his opponent, and his valuable ser- 
 
CA UCUS NOMINA TIONS. 5 3 
 
 vices in behalf of the general welfare of Britain in 
 the House of Commons, did not sufficiently com- 
 mend him to the Bristol voters and make good his 
 re-election in 1 780. 
 
 In 1774 he entered the canvass after the polls 
 were opened and solicited votes and won the elec- 
 tion. In 1780 he was in the canvass before the 
 polls were opened and solicited votes, and notwith- 
 standing an eloquent plea, far more able than the 
 one Cruger dittoed, he was forced to withdraw to 
 save himself from a greater humiliation, a foreshad- 
 owed defeat. Local issues were too strong for him, 
 and he entered the House again as the representa- 
 tive of a pocket borough, belonging to his power- 
 ful friend the Marquis of Rockingham. 
 
 Somewhat similar was the course and experience 
 of the historian Macaulay in 1839. After obtain- 
 ing considerable reputation as the representative 
 of the *' pocket borough " of Calne, owned by Lord 
 Lansdowne, he stood for Edinburgh. His speech 
 soliciting votes in that critical town was well re- 
 ceived. It is said one of the electors commended 
 it, this wise : " Oh, It was a wise-like speech, an' no 
 defeshunt in airgement : but eh ! man, I'm think- 
 ing I could ha' said the hail o' It myself." His ap- 
 peal won at that time their votes. But his advo- 
 cacy of fair dealing with Roman Catholics and 
 some local disturbing issues gave occasion to his 
 opponents for stirring up the bitterest opposition 
 
54 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 to him and to his re-election. He labored with 
 them in a powerful speech, but met with interrup- 
 tions and insults. Justifying his course he ex- 
 claimed, "■ If your representative be an honest 
 man — " " Ay, but he's no' that," came back to him 
 from the crowd. He struggled manfully to the end 
 but was beaten by a man of little note, a Mr. Cowan, 
 and retired from political life until, five years after, 
 Edinburgh, of its own motion, without request or 
 effort on his part, again elected him her representa- 
 tive. A poem written shortly after his defeat con- 
 tains the often-quoted stanza : 
 
 "Amidst the din of all things fell and vile — 
 Hate's yell and Envy's hiss and Folly's bray — 
 Remember me ! and with an unforced smile 
 See riches, baubles, flatterers pass away." 
 
 From these and numerous other examples that 
 might be cited it can be seen, when men with 
 ability to serve their country, like Burke and Ma- 
 caulay, possessing world-wide reputation, are by 
 the "glorious system " of self-nomination driven to 
 such humiliating practices, what may be expected 
 of men of lesser note when aiming at political 
 honors. Dickens, in his description of the Eatans- 
 will contest, has only cleverly outlined the salient 
 features of.such canvassing. The Hon. Slumkeys 
 and Fitzkins run for office in all elective govern- 
 ments. A personal contest for votes by self-nomi- 
 
CA UCUS NOMINA TIONS. 
 
 55 
 
 nated candidates exposes In the baldest manner 
 the nominee to the caprice of the selfish and vul- 
 gar. A coarse man at the polls can insult and re- 
 fuse to vote for such a candidate with greater ef- 
 fect than In the limits of a caucus, the humilia- 
 tion of great men affording pleasure to base. 
 
 The humor of Dickens' caricature of the average 
 husting contest in England scarcely relieves the 
 rough vulgarity manifested. The Hon. Samuel 
 Slumkey, of Slumkey Hall, courting the crowd by 
 shaking hands with twenty workmen washed and 
 placed for the purpose, and kissing six babies in 
 arms all prepared in advance, drowning the voice 
 of his opponent, the Hon. Horatio Fitzkin, of 
 FItzkin Lodge, with a brass band, and the absurd 
 acting before a gin- and beer-filled crowd, is suffi- 
 ciently realistic to be accepted as a picture of an 
 actual contest. 
 
 Take a scene described in a late issue of the 
 Edinburgh Statesman as having occurred at the 
 New Harbor, Dunbar, which would be impossible 
 in those places where the contest is between par- 
 ties primarily, and only secondarily between men. 
 The Hon. Sir James Grant Suttle presents himself 
 before his constituents at Dunbar and solicits their 
 votes. Provost Brand introduces him, and the 
 Hon. Sir James says : '* Ladles and gentlemen, I 
 am here because it Is threatened by Lord William 
 Hay to pull down the auld kirk." '' Nae fear of it 
 
^6 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 being pulled down," exclaimed Mary, a great mid- 
 dle-aged woman in blue print with a red-and-blue 
 rosette on her breast. '' If you send me to Parlia- 
 ment," continued Sir James, *' I shall oppose that 
 with all my might ; I am sure every one here will 
 vote for me and show Lord William — " " Hoo- 
 ray," shouted Mary, " it will never be pulled down." 
 Cheers from the crowd. Here Sir James crossed 
 over to Mary and shook hands with her. Mary, 
 encouraged, put her arm about Sir James and 
 patted him on the back, amidst great laughter, 
 saying, '' Ay, you're a nice man — bless you, I hope 
 you'll win." Provost Brand addressed the crowd, 
 saying, '' I am perfectly sure, fellow townsmen, if 
 Sir James Is elected you will not be disappointed. 
 I am sure what he has promised he will perform. 
 His heart Is with us and he will do his best' for 
 Dunbar." Again the crowd cheered. *' Look here," 
 said Sir James, " I propose a vote of thanks for 
 the Provost, for the nice way he has spoken. He is 
 a great friend of mine." '' Hear ! hear ! " shouted 
 the crowd, giving cheers. ''Thank you," said the 
 Provost, bowing low. '' I have one more duty to 
 perform. I have got permission to do it from my 
 Lady Susan. I have a commission to do It. Now 
 I am going to execute It," said Sir James, and 
 turning to Mary he kissed her cheek — somewhat 
 gingerly, the reporter adds — at which the crowd 
 
CA UCUS NOMINA TIONS. 
 
 •57 
 
 laughed immensely, and cheering with the utmost 
 enthusiasm the meeting broke up. 
 
 Can a caucus scene be produced where indecency 
 and ignorance more completely ruled the hour ? 
 
 In the United States also self nominations are 
 very far from being free from objectionable feat- 
 ures. Note a few mild instances. Every one is 
 familiar with '' Davy " Crockett's trick of drawing 
 the attention of the audience from his opponent's 
 speech, and at the same time winning votes for 
 himself by going around in the crowd with a bottle 
 of whiskey in one side-pocket and a plug of to- 
 bacco with a clasp-knife stuck in it in the other, 
 allowing each one, as his taste was, to take a drink 
 or a chew of his tobacco. Crockett was not of the 
 gentry class, as were his opponents, and he had to 
 draw the common people to him to make a success- 
 ful fight. His opponents did not always treat him 
 with due consideration. They affected to ignore 
 him. Occasions were not wanting that enabled 
 him to more than retaliate on them. Once, while 
 an opponent was speaking, a flock of Guinea hens 
 set up a persistent and noisy cry, and the speaker 
 paused and requested that some one would oblige 
 him by dispersing the fowls, which was done, 
 when he continued his speech to the end without 
 so much as mentioning Crockett's name. This 
 discourtesy did not escape Crockett's attention, 
 and he was not slow to avail himself of it. When 
 
58 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 it came his turn to speak he remarked, ** Though 
 my opponent did not see fit to mention my name 
 during his speech once, yet my little feathered 
 friends did not forget me ; but when they came 
 up to remind the gentleman of his omission, by 
 crying with all their strength, ' Crockett, Crockett, 
 Crockett,' he was so offended that instead of tak- 
 ing the hint and saying something mean of me, 
 he had them stoned off." The hit carried the day 
 for the witty backwoodsman. 
 
 In a more dignified way Henry Clay turned the 
 frontiersmen back into the ranks of his followers, 
 after they had been prejudiced and induced to desert 
 him for some fancied oversight of their local mat- 
 ters. Meeting them on their own ground he won 
 the confidence of one of their leaders so far as to 
 be allowed by him to inspect his rifle, which he bore 
 with him, as his Teutonic ancestors were wont 
 to do to their assemblages. Examining the gun 
 Clay inquired, " Is it true to its aim?" '* Yes, sir," 
 emphatically replied the owner. ** But did it never 
 miss fire?" inquired he. " Oh, yes, sir." "What 
 did you. do?" asked Clay — "throw it away?" 
 *' Why, no," replied the hunter, '' I picked the flint 
 and tried her again." " Ah, I see," said Clay, as 
 with his blandest smile and most gracious manner 
 he pressed the weapon back into the hunter's 
 hands, " and will you throw me away because I 
 missed fire once — wont you pick the flint and try 
 
CA UCUS NOMINA TIONS. 
 
 59 
 
 me again ? " The smile and sophistry won ; and all 
 the frontiersmen returned to the following of the 
 marvellous "■ Harry of the West." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln entered political life by self- 
 nomination, seeking an election to the Legislature 
 of Illinois from Sangamon County. His opening 
 speech Is preserved by his biographer as follows : 
 
 "■ Gentlemen and fellow-cltlzens, I presume you 
 all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lin- 
 coln. I have been solicited by many friends to be- 
 come a candidate for the Legislature. My politics 
 are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. 
 I am In favor of a national bank ; I am In favor of 
 the Internal-Improvement system and a high pro- 
 tective tariff. Those are my sentiments and polit- 
 ical principles. If elected I shall be thankful ; If 
 not, It will be all the same." The national bank 
 meant sound currency for his prairie friends, and 
 internal improvement meant appropriations for the 
 benefit of Sangamon River, the immediate water 
 communication, when high enough, of his neigh- 
 bors with the navigable Mississippi. But he was 
 defeated. At the next election he canvassed more 
 successfully. A gentleman relates : " He came to 
 my house near Island Green during harvest. 
 There were some thirty men in the field. He got 
 his dinner and went out in the field where the men 
 were at work. I gave him an Introduction, and the 
 boys said they could not vote for a man unless he 
 
6o THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 could work a 'hand.' 'Well, boys,' said he, * if 
 that is all, I am sure of your votes.' He took hold 
 of a cradle and led all the way around the field with 
 perfect ease. The boys were satisfied," and, the 
 gentleman adds, " I don't think he lost one of their 
 votes. He was this time elected." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's subsequent political career was 
 that of a regular nominee of a party through its 
 caucuses, and his speeches from the stump became 
 exponents of party measures and principles, and 
 were not only effective at the time for party suc- 
 cess, but have tended greatly to fix the views 
 of the people and the policy of the nation. You 
 see in them no attempt to accommodate himself 
 to the local views of the voters, but you learn of 
 measures that pertain to all alike. On national 
 questions he advocated principles that behooved 
 the nation at large to accept. But we may not 
 altogether measure successful men by the meth- 
 ods through which they gained success in polit- 
 ical life. If Edmund Burke could ask a man to 
 honor him with his vote and graciously descend 
 from the hustings to thank him for giving it to 
 him, he was careful enough of his fame as a 
 statesman to let no such subserviency appear in 
 his conduct in the House of Commons. And 
 Macaulay could sustain his rank in politics as 
 a statesman, in literature as a historian, notwith- 
 standing the brutal contest in Edinburgh. Yet it 
 
CA UCUS NOMINA TIONS. 6 1 
 
 is not so with the Samuel Slumkeys. As to them 
 we may with Httle risk of disappointment never ex- 
 pect them to rise above a canvass which will wit- 
 ness the Sir Jameses kissing rude women in public 
 and awaken in or sentiments for '' auld kirks" that 
 neither Parliament nor a general public will ever 
 hear anything about, to win an election. A man 
 like Crockett, fighting an aristocratical element 
 opposed to him, would gain doubtless some cultiva- 
 tion in manners and some direction to his native 
 shrewdness, and possibly prove of some service to 
 his country. But the fact is, Mr. Clay and Mr. 
 Lincoln neither attained to the full measure of 
 their powers and usefulness, and the free use of 
 their great abilities, until they were past hunting 
 out votes and compassing the prejudices and clan- 
 nishnesses of their supporters. The history of self- 
 nominees shows them to be, as a class, inclined to 
 yield to local opinions that have the least unpop- 
 ularity about them, and to avoid controversy, or, 
 as Burke put it, '' to keep silence from the begin- 
 ning to the end of the election in all matters of 
 discussion," and to feel their way and move in 
 and out with the tide. In the United States, while, 
 down to the anti-slavery victory, the self-nominees 
 of the South monopolized the state offices, the 
 caucus nominees advanced the leading and most 
 abiding measures of the country, so strong and 
 assured in his position is the man who speaks for 
 
 f( X^ Of THE ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
62 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 and advocates measures of party. In such work 
 the organized strength of the party sustains him, 
 and he is not embarrassed by fears of offence given 
 to his constituents. It is not expected here to 
 abate in the least the just condemnation of the ac- 
 tion of a caucus when the interests of an individ- 
 ual only are regarded. In such cases it is only 
 another form of self-nomination with the advantage 
 of not appearing to be so, but appearing as the 
 regular candidate. The effort here is to show, 
 though never so weakly, that course to be the bane 
 of the caucus. And when there is self-seeking 
 under the cloak of devotion to party measures in 
 order to secure the party nomination, which not 
 unfrequently occurs, the action of the voter is 
 rightly guided if he makes the nomination an 
 empty honor. Nor can it be claimed that suit- 
 able men will always be nominated when measures 
 are scrupulously kept in view and govern the cau- 
 cus action. The old saying, that a stream will 
 not rise higher than its source, is fully applicable 
 to politics. In an unenlightened neighborhood a 
 caucus will be necessarily ruled by unenlightened 
 men, and its representatives will come from that 
 class to a very great extent, If not entirely. 
 While In cultivated neighborhoods the represent- 
 atives will be of their stamp. If cultivated men 
 attend the caucus. But the advantage to party 
 is the same in either case. Both classes will, 
 
CA UCUS NOMINA TIONS. 
 
 63 
 
 if not self-seekers, support party measures and be 
 faithful to party principles ; while the advantage 
 to the nominee of such a caucus is, that he will have 
 the party support. He need not demean himself 
 to obtain votes. Indeed, it will be better for him 
 if he does not disgust his party friends by sinking 
 his manliness in unnecessary eagerness to secure 
 his own election. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE GROWTH OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 Mr. Seward further reflected, that the caucus 
 barely received by the Virginians would in the end 
 abolish their glorious system of self-nominations. 
 pVnd in truth the caucus has grown with the nation : 
 tor like it, its origin is with the people who speak 
 through the caucus and their representatives 
 /chosen at it. Spread as the nation is over thou- 
 sands of miles of territory, there manifestly is no 
 opportunity for the citizens to confer together ex- 
 cept through representatives chosen by a system 
 so organized as to embrace all the people and ex- 
 press authoritatively the sentiment of every local- 
 ity. The public press serves the very useful 
 purpose of making known what transpires — scat- 
 tering the account of it everywhere — and of the 
 local sentiment, so far as obtainable from public 
 meetings, resolutions and addresses. But the 
 press does not represent the people, which can be 
 done, only, by that organization of the simplest 
 form, the caucus. The sentiments of people who 
 compose a caucus are usually formed in advance, 
 and they meet with those holding similar views to 
 
 64 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 65 
 
 publicly advocate them — to bring out still greater 
 action and union in their behalf. If this may best 
 be done by choosing representatives to meet with 
 the representatives of the caucuses of other local- 
 ities, such will be the course pursued, especially 
 when a wide field is aimed at, as the union of men 
 of like sentiment in different counties and states, 
 and the concentration of the political sentiment of 
 the whole nation. 
 
 Since also caucuses and conventions make nom- 
 inations for the offices of the territory embraced 
 within their jurisdiction, it will be the fault of 
 those who should attend them if the very best men 
 are not nominated. 
 
 When the colonies cast off, politically, the moor- 
 ings of the old country they saved themselves 
 from drifting by acting upon the advice of the 
 General Congress, to forthwith set up provisional 
 governments for themselves, severally. In some 
 instances they continued to act under the colonial 
 charter, dropping the royal name and title from 
 their proceedings and using instead the name and 
 authority of the commonwealth. In other cases a 
 constitution was formed and adopted, and an ex- 
 ecutive officer, to serve in lieu of the royal ap- 
 pointee, provided for. One of the most important 
 questions that came Immediately to the front for 
 settlement was the manner in which the person to 
 be Invested with the executive office should be 
 
 5 
 
^ THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 selected. They sought the most worthy and dis- 
 creet. This problem was attempted to be solved 
 in various ways. There were legislative assem- 
 blies in each of the colonies under the old regime, 
 chosen by the yeomanry : and as a general rule 
 local officers, elected by townships and parishes. 
 There was also a governor appointed by the crown. 
 The state of Connecticut adopted the plan of 
 choosing in the first instance twenty men, from 
 which number, by another ballot, twelve were 
 chosen, who organized themselves into a council 
 of affairs with a chairman or chief executive of the 
 council. This scheme was advocated in New York, 
 but it was determined there to give the election of 
 the governor directly to the votes of the people. 
 In other respects most of the officers in New York 
 belonging to the executive department of govern- 
 ment, civil and military, were appointive, as also 
 were the judiciary from the humblest justice of the 
 peace to the supreme chancellor. These appoin- 
 tees were so numerous in New York that they 
 brought the appointing power directly in contact 
 with the people of every hamlet of the state. 
 Among them were the sheriffs, coroners, clerks, 
 treasurers, and many others, provided for, by char- 
 ters of towns and cities. And as all the able- 
 bodied men of the state were enrolled in the 
 militia and were officered by the governor and his 
 appointing council, it left very few people not im- 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 67 
 
 mediately reached by the appointing power that 
 had Its centre In the governor's office. The senti- 
 ment of the state was thus substantially controlled 
 by the governor, George Clinton. He was an 
 ardent Whig, a native of the state, and Its first 
 elected governor. He had served with consider- 
 able distinction In an expedition against the 
 French, had been a member of the Continental 
 Congress, and was commissioned by It brigadier- 
 general. . He boldly contested, and successfully, 
 the sovereignty of the state with the royal gov- 
 ernor, Tryon ; and the appointing power In his 
 hands was used by him very effectively to that 
 end. Clinton's love for liberty and his native 
 state grew with his service in its behalf, and at 
 the close of the war he opposed the yielding up 
 to a general government by the commonwealth 
 any of the advantages growing out of Its position, 
 extensive territory, magnificent harbor and water 
 ways, which gave It superiority over Its sister 
 states. He preferred disunion to a more perma- 
 nent union of the states, and was led to oppose a 
 convention that should frame the Federal Consti- 
 tution. Although governor of the state, he was 
 also made president of the state convention, called 
 to ratify that instrument, and his influence, aided 
 by his position, came near defeating it. At first he 
 seemed to lead the majority, but the outcome be- 
 ing in favor of the adoption of the Constitution, 
 
6s THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 the Federalists were encouraged by that, and in 
 1788 entered the field and opposed his re-election 
 to the governorship. They commenced by making 
 caucuses of the people, and in Feb., 1789, put 
 Chief Justice Yates in nomination. He also was 
 originally opposed to the Federal Constitution, 
 but upon its adoption he promptly charged the 
 grand jury that it was the supreme law of the land 
 and must be obeyed. Here was rare, if not new 
 experience for Governor CHnton, and indeed for 
 the yeomanry of the state, and the election came 
 near ousting him from his seat. In 1792 the 
 Federalists renewed the contest. A caucus was 
 called in the City of New York, of which Peter 
 Van Ness was chairman. John Jay was by it nom- 
 inated for governor, with Stephen Van Rensselaer 
 for lieutenant-governor. A few days after a gen- 
 eral meeting was held, with General Ten Broeck 
 for chairman, at which Jay's nomination was rati- 
 fied enthusiastically. Other meetings followed 
 over the state, at all of which Jay's nomination was 
 heartily endorsed. In the mean while Clinton was 
 not idle. With ofificers appointed by him in every 
 township making devoted partisans everywhere, 
 meetings were held in his behalf, also, and the 
 contest became animated. Perhaps for the first 
 time the power and influence of local meetings 
 were seen and felt in political affairs in New York. 
 Clinton endeavored to make his position in the 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE CAUCUS. 69 
 
 executive office impregnable, and used the appoint- 
 ing power with great effect to render it so. The 
 large vote cast for Justice Yates three years 
 before warned him that he must maintain his 
 control over the freemen of the state or lose his 
 office, and he was assuredly loth to lose it. 
 
 By the law then in force in New York all the 
 ballots of the state were taken to the secretary of 
 state to be deposited for counting, and the result 
 to be determined by a committee of the Legislat- 
 ure. The majority of this committee were Clin- 
 ton's adherents, and, as it was well known that Jay 
 had a decided majority of all the votes cast, this 
 board of canvassers became exceedingly anxious 
 that all the forms of proceedings tending to secure 
 regularity should be observed ; and finding defects 
 in the case of three counties in which Jay had re- 
 ceived large majorities they determined by a strict 
 party vote not to count the ballots cast by those 
 counties. The grounds of their decision appear to 
 have been, that the ballots were not brought to the 
 secretary of state by the officer designated in the 
 statute to bring them. Their reasoning ran thus : 
 "■ The person who brought the ballot-boxes to the 
 secretary was not such an officer as the statute 
 designates to bring them to the secretary of state ; 
 that he could not bring them legally ; that the 
 secretary could not legally receive them from him ; 
 and therefore the secretary had nothing from those 
 
70 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 counties that the committee could canvass." And 
 what appears most strange In this remarkable 
 transaction, — for the error of 'transmission of the 
 ballot-boxes from the counties to the state office 
 worked of Itself no corruption of the ballots sealed 
 up In them, and there was no dispute over their 
 Identity, nor was It charged the ballots had been 
 tampered with, — Is the fact, the board did receive 
 the boxes from the secretary not to order them to 
 be returned to the counties for re-transmlsslon If 
 that act was vital, but to decree the ballots In them 
 should be destroyed by burning ! And burned by 
 them they were. 
 
 This proceeding roused intense excitement, not 
 only in the three counties disfranchised, but 
 throughout the state. Meetings were held to 
 ** canvass the canvassers," as the cry was, but 
 which threatened more serious matters to the pub- 
 lic peace. Jay was absent at the time the can- 
 vassers declared Clinton elected, and In answer to 
 the many inflammatory addresses and appeals to 
 him he counselled acquiescence, saying in his re- 
 ply, ** Every consideration of propriety forbids that 
 difference of opinion respecting candidates should 
 suspend or Interrupt the national good humor 
 which harmonizes society and softens the asperi- 
 ties incident to human life." And to his wife he 
 wrote : " A few years will put us all In the dust, 
 and then It will be of more Importance to me to 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 n 
 
 have governed myself than to have governed the 
 state." Recall the political situation in New York 
 and the nation. Washington had not as yet 
 served his first term as president. There was still 
 a great deal of friction, not only in the public mind 
 but in the machinery of government slowly work- 
 ing its way into public confidence. If the result of 
 elections could not be promptly acquiesced in from 
 the start the whole fabric would go by the board, 
 and a condition of chronic anarchy inaugurated, as 
 was afterwards developed in Mexico and South 
 America. Had Jay been a self-seeker, a self-nom- 
 inee, a chieftain leading his forces through a hard- 
 won political campaign, would he have been per- 
 mitted to pour oil on the waters and surrender up 
 the fruits of the victory to his discomfited oppo- 
 nents ? Many instances of self-control and denial 
 are recorded, but it will be a distant and persever- 
 ing search that will find a parallel to the entire 
 disinterestedness of this eminent man. 
 
 The whole vote of the three counties, including 
 those cast for Clinton as well as for Jay, were 
 burned, thus exposing Clinton to the charge made 
 by Burke, against his opponent — that he was will; 
 ing to slaughter his friends to destroy his enemy, 
 for the reason that he did not have friends enough. 
 Why a man who had reached the high position 
 held by Clinton, through valuable services to his 
 country, should have countenanced, much less ac- 
 
72 
 
 THE AMERICAN CA UCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 cepted the fruits of this high-handed proceeding 
 can hardly be answered now. PoHtlcal moraHty 
 has grown since then and we may congratulate our- 
 selves upon that fact. It would seem that a long 
 and uninterrupted lease of power had caused Clin- 
 ton to think it necessary that he should continue 
 to be the governor of the state. He had seen it 
 emerge from a colonial, to a condition promising 
 imperial power, and under his governorship, and a 
 feeling that harm would come to his beloved com- 
 monwealth if the baton of power should fall from 
 his hands, doubtless possessed him, and seemed to 
 him to justify extraordinary strictness In constru- 
 ing the statute in case of the succession. His 
 confidence In his co-patriots was thus disturbed 
 by his Intense partisanship. In the next recurring 
 election Jay was triumphantly elected, and the ob- 
 stinate Clinton, after eighteen years of office, went 
 for a period into private life. That the state did 
 not crush Itself upon hidden rocks he doubtless at- 
 tributed to an overseeing and forbearing Provi- 
 dence. Jay succeeded himself. But Clinton suc- 
 ceeded Jay, and again, after an Interval of six 
 years, became Governor of New York. In 1804 
 he was elected Vice-President of the United States, 
 and being re-elected in 1808, died In office. His 
 most important act while vice-president was his 
 casting vote that defeated the re-chartering the 
 national bank. Clinton served under the Fed- 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE CAUCUS. y^ 
 
 eral Constitution, but he never swerved from his 
 orig^inal animosity to it. He hated it because 
 it diminished the glory of New York ; and he 
 died without abating his hatred. The defeat of 
 the charter of the bank brought in its train untold 
 misery. All over the United States failures en- 
 sued, business was brought to a standstill, and pov- 
 erty and distress took the place of competency and 
 wealth even. The distress of the country finally 
 forced from its reluctant foes, in 1816, a second 
 charter, which aided to restore confidence and re- 
 sulting prosperity. The opposition to the bank 
 maintained that it was not warranted by the Con- 
 stitution. It did not occur to the fiscal depart- 
 ment of the Government then that the defects, if 
 any, in the powers of the bank might be obviated, 
 and the system of national banking, so necessary 
 to the country, be preserved. That problem was 
 to be solved later. 
 
 Jay on retiring from the gubernatorial chair was 
 appointed Chief Justice of the United States, but 
 being in his sixtieth year, and concurring in the 
 wisdom of the limitation in the constitution of the 
 state of New York of judges to 60 years of age, 
 and as he was one of the framers of that in- 
 strument, he declined the ofifice and retired perma- 
 nently to private life. He passed 29 years in rural 
 life on his estate in a secluded part of Westchester 
 County, New York, devoting his remaining days 
 
74 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 to acts of charity, reform and moral improvements, 
 never failinor to attend elections, even the minor 
 ones, casting his vote, and rejoicing in the rapid 
 growth of his country and its evident prosperity, 
 in spite of crude measures and the poHtical bhnd- 
 ness of partisan leaders. In his address in 1795, 
 when assuming the duties of governor, he said he 
 was determined to regard his fellow-citizens with 
 an equal eye and to cherish and advance merit 
 wherever found. He refused to remove from 
 office political opponents for that reason only. 
 On being asked to remove a Federalist who was 
 an indifferent partisan and give the office to a Clin- 
 ton man who would work for his. Jay's, interests, 
 he replied, '' Do you, sir, advise me to sell a friend 
 to buy an enemy?" Hammond says Jay's senti- 
 ments were noble, but ** it is to be regretted that 
 neither Jay nor any other person holding the 
 appointing power could, if sincerely disposed, 
 carry them out without sacrifice of himself and 
 party." And such seems to have been the result. 
 As before noted, Clinton regained power in 1801, 
 and in the triennial renewal of commissions to the 
 army of appointees throughout the state, reaching 
 the remotest settlements, — rapidly made by the 
 streaming emigration westward, — he sought out 
 friends and rejected the Indifferent and inimical. 
 Once more, he concentrated the public power in 
 his own hands, and so thoroughly was it done that 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 75 
 
 a long lease of almost absolute political control of 
 the state remained with him and survived to his 
 party. Indeed, in spite of disasters, failures of 
 many party measures, of many signal local defeats 
 at the polls, and bitter division among Its own 
 members — now beginning to be called Democrats 
 — hold upon the executive office was Impregnable. 
 A long line of Democratic governors followed 
 Clinton. At length in 1824 the opposition rallied 
 under the name of the People's Party, and Inaugu- 
 rated a series of caucuses and conventions of the 
 people throughout the state, which sent to the city 
 of Utica on the 21st of September an Influential 
 body of men, many of whom were widely known as 
 men of talent, and who put De Witt Clinton In 
 nomination for governor. He was triumphantly 
 elected, and was also made his own successor. In 
 October, 1826, the Democrats, to oppose Clinton, 
 likewise called a convention of delegates from 
 local caucuses and conventions to meet at Her- 
 kimer. From this period the primary caucus and 
 state and local conventions have supplanted all 
 other methods of nominating candidates by 
 that party In New York. In national politics, 
 owing to the system of electors for choosing a 
 president, an insurmountable barrier has been 
 Interposed to self-nomination for the presidency, 
 and the country has been spared the Infliction of 
 doubtless thousands of such candidates seeking it. 
 
76 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 With the exception of Washington and John 
 Adams, who were the free choice of the electors 
 themselves, no president has been chosen without 
 having been first designated for the office by rep- 
 resentatives of the party whose nominee he was. 
 Some members of Congress in 1796 for the first 
 time ventured to make such a designation. The 
 need of concentrating all the opposition to Adams 
 was the moving cause of the act. Jefferson was 
 by them nominated, but failed of election. The 
 scheme was renewed in 1800, and prospered so 
 well that its nominee, Jefferson, was successful, 
 and from that time it was continued until the ten- 
 tative people's conventions of representatives from 
 primary caucuses and conventions became popular 
 and strong enough to drive congressional nomi- 
 nees from the field. The Democrats summoned a 
 general or national convention in 1832 and en- 
 dorsed Jackson's second nomination for the pres- 
 idency. William Wirt had been nominated early 
 in 1 83 1 for president by a convention of persons 
 opposed to secret societies, especially to Free- 
 masonry. This opposition to social secret societies 
 soon run its course, proving utterly insufficient to 
 bind together for any considerable time a political 
 party. Indeed, the folly of attempting to build 
 up a national party upon a mere prejudice is now 
 very apparent, however it may have appeared to 
 the politicians of '32. But the movement threw 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 77 
 
 up into public life several distinguished men, who 
 proved to be wiser than the feeling of alarm, on 
 account of the spread of Masonry, that gave them 
 their votes. 
 
 Since 1832 the regular nominations of parties! 
 having more than a momentary existence, have 
 uniformly been made through caucuses and con- 
 ventions. 
 
 That the caucus through which the people can 
 speak would supplant the ''glorious system of 
 self-nominations," limited as we have seen them 
 to be, and humiliating as it necessarily Is to a 
 worthy man, and fruitful of the lowest practices 
 in winning votes, Mr. Seward had, as the history 
 shows, good reason to foretell. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 An eminent American publicist* has said, re- 
 flecting upon the nature of the caucus, *' Theoret- 
 ically it may be defined as a deliberative meeting 
 of citizens for consull:ation with a view to deter- 
 mine the course of public action." And he adds, 
 '' To suppose calm deliberation by men who man- 
 age the caucus is to suppose that which to them 
 would be an absurdity ; their task is simple enough, 
 is management and artifice, under the maxim, all 
 is fair to obtain a majority of the votes that on a 
 certain occasion shall be put in a box or hat. It 
 is not important that the voting shall represent 
 intelligence or morality, or be those of rightful 
 voters, it is enough that they count and give di- 
 rection to the political machinery that turns out 
 here a constable or a justice, there a sheriff or a 
 recorder of deeds, and a little further on a mem- 
 ber of Congress." 
 
 But it must not be overlooked, that the manage- 
 ment and artifice referred to are to a certain ex- 
 tent the result of earnest consultation and not im- 
 * Hon. T. M. Cooley, Ch. Justice of Michigan. 
 78 
 
I'ROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 79 
 
 possibly of calm deliberation, had before the cau- 
 cus meets, that the men who attend the caucus 
 thus prepared, necessarily give direction to the 
 political machinery as against the undecided and 
 unprepared. Now all electors, good and bad, can 
 think about politics and the direction to be given 
 to the political machinery before the caucus meets, 
 wherefore there appears to be no practical diffi- 
 culty in obtaining the best results, except it be to 
 rally a majority of the voters at the caucus to sup- 
 port the best. 
 
 Practically more reliance is placed upon the 
 better sentiment of the community to so influence 
 the direction of the caucus that the worse will not 
 always happen than is placed upon the votes of 
 those who complain. But if free course is given 
 to the political striker, why complain that he is 
 turning out things to his own liking, that he does 
 not nominate the best men, but himself for office ? 
 If what those complaining say of the caucus is 
 wholly true, is it not a matter of great surprise 
 that its results are not worse than they actually 
 are ? The better sentiment of the community 
 must certainly be felt within its doors or the aver- 
 age politician is not as unpatriotic as he is charged 
 with being. This critic further says : "In short, 
 the caucus as a practical fact is often as far as 
 possible from those famous town-meetings of New 
 England which a century ago were accustomed to 
 
8o THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 gather at the town-hall or the town-common and 
 discuss with freedom and intelligence public ques- 
 tions in which Otis, Warren and Samuel Adams 
 made themselves immortal." 
 
 But public discussion at town-meetings is not 
 yet altogether a lost habit, as any one may testify, 
 who is familiar with the proceedings from actual 
 attendance upon them. The change that has 
 taken place since a century ago, has relegated the 
 discussion of public questions in a great measure 
 to the press and the "stump." Still, such ques- 
 tions are yet discussed, indeed critically considered 
 in respect to their bearing upon the home and 
 rights of individuals, commencing at the fireside 
 and in the family circle. 
 
 " In the long nights 
 When at my father's house the chief people 
 
 Came And of the land's weal 
 
 Considered in understanding speech 
 Oft marking, heard I many words of wisdom 
 Which the wise thought and the good wished, 
 And in my heart have treasured." 
 
 And there is little danger of an elector being 
 found without an opinion at a caucus, if he chooses 
 to attend and exercise it. And when occasion calls 
 for discussion there is not wanting those who have 
 an opinion to express if opportunity is given. 
 Oftentimes, too, the discussion is conducted on a 
 high and intelligent plane. Consider the follow- 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. gl 
 
 ing extract from a verbatim report of a modern 
 caucus speech. It was called out by the refusal of 
 certain resident electors to participate in the cau- 
 cus because they held government appointments 
 and were under the orders of the President forbid- 
 ding all government employees from participating 
 in political caucusing. 
 
 -' While we are compelled," the speaker said, 
 *' to admit the great force of all that can be said 
 in favor of civil service reform, yet we see in its 
 operation a great danger to the Republican 
 party. ... It would be a melancholy collapse of 
 the new system if we, weakened by its working, 
 should fail in retaining the administration in our 
 hands and should find the rules of the civil ser- 
 vice reform swept away through the success of 
 the Democrats, and the old order of things re- 
 stored, and we laughed at for wearing the rope 
 with which to hang ourselves. Our hope must be 
 in bringing in others to take the place of those we 
 lose : and yet I confess I have not much faith in 
 interesting those personally who now only nomi- 
 nally do so, to take a more active part with us, and 
 r,hare our labors. Let every citizen who believes 
 in the attempt to establish civil service reform, 
 look to it that he gives us his aid and assistance to 
 compensate for our loss." 
 
 It Is apparent, the alarm felt by the speaker for 
 the success of his party and its possession of the 
 
82 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 administration of the government, arose not only 
 from the workings of the President's order, ex- 
 cluding those in the service of the nation from all 
 participation in the caucus, but also from the in- 
 difference of others to the service they could ren- 
 der their party by attendance upon the caucus, 
 and who profess to believe in civil service reform, 
 and that it should become the practice of the na- 
 tion through the efforts of the Republican party. 
 His argument is not against the civil service 
 system, but is a call upon those who claim to be 
 its friend and the friend of pure politics to do 
 their duty and accomplish all they advocate by 
 attendance on the party caucus, and not imperil 
 success by their neglect to attend. Certainly he 
 discusses a governmental matter. Samuel Adams 
 in his day discussed *' no taxation without rep- 
 resentation," and urged those who believed in 
 that policy to come forward and join him in his 
 efforts to enforce it, and not jeopardize his work 
 by withholding their aid. Undoubtedly Ameri- 
 cans were more disposed to public discussion of 
 measures at their meetings in Adams' time, when 
 the press was less serviceable, than they now are. 
 
 Furthermore, the mass of political questions 
 which arise are of a temporary nature, though 
 some of them seem to act as forerunners of still 
 greater ones that at intervals come up for action. 
 But it will be recollected as a matter of history 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. 8^ 
 
 that the caucus which met in Tom Dawes' garret in 
 1772 smoked, drank flip, discussed public affairs 
 and made choice of men for office before they were 
 voted for at the polls, put Samuel Adams in nomi- 
 nation and secured his election as representative 
 from Boston. 
 
 The critic of the caucus before quoted also re- 
 marks that the deliberations of the caucus ** are 
 often of a sort in which trained muscle is of more 
 importance than trained intellect." Doubtless 
 when men go into caucus with their minds made 
 up they are more impatient at discussion and 
 opposition than when unsettled and meditating. 
 This occurs everywhere in life. A caucus scene 
 is sketched by a New York reporter as follows : 
 
 '' Last night the factions mustered in force, and 
 truth to say, there seemed to be very little choice 
 between them either as to their appearance or 
 methods. Long before seven o'clock there was a 
 great crowd in line outside the door of the hall, 
 and the moment the doors were thrown open the 
 hall was filled. At one end was a table on which 
 the ballot-box was placed, and across the room 
 about a foot in front of this a strong wooden par- 
 tition about four feet high had been fixed. In 
 front of this was a line of police who had hard 
 work to keep the rough crowd from flying at each 
 other's throats. The row commenced the instant 
 the meeting opened in the contest in the election 
 
84 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 of officers. This was accomplished and the polls 
 were opened, and from that moment until past 
 eleven there was nothing but howling, shouting, 
 cheering, and every species of noise that leather- 
 bound throats were capable of. Both sides seemed 
 ready to run in all the men they could, and each 
 challenged the other the whole evening through. 
 Twice the police charged through the room and 
 somewhat thinned the dense crowd and let in 
 some fresh air. There were two tickets in the 
 field. The voting continued until ten fifty-five, 
 when the polls were declared closed amid loud 
 shouting and cheering. The next thing was the 
 counting the ballots, and the quiet of expectancy 
 reigned through the room. It was found that the 
 result of nearly three hours' voting was just sev- 
 enty-four votes cast. At least two hundred men 
 had been around the polls all the evening. The 
 chairman of the meeting announced the result, 
 which he did amid frantic cheering by the winning 
 party. Then followed an example of that most 
 satisfactory phase of our politics. The very men 
 who for two hours had been glaring at each other 
 and quarrelling like tigers, all fell to shaking 
 hands, the outside crowd cheered the successful, 
 and then the beaten candidate with equal hearti- 
 ness, and good humor appeared to prevail all 
 around." Another life-sketch made by the corre- 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. g^ 
 
 spondent of a Chicago daily of a scene which 
 transpired in the city of London : 
 
 *' Last evening we witnessed what an American 
 would call a caucus to promote the election of 
 three candidates for membership of the Board of 
 Education for the Marylebone division or West 
 End of London. A large hall was completely 
 filled with well-dressed and intelligent gentlemen 
 and ladies. The candidates were each men of 
 high standing, one belonging to a noble family 
 but of liberal principles, and another the president 
 of the college in Regent's Park. The chair was 
 occupied by a clergyman of considerable repute 
 in London. Everything would lead us to antici- 
 pate a quiet evening of instruction on political 
 issues. But no sooner had the speaking com- 
 menced than there ensued a scene of noise and 
 confusion which beggars description. Every sen- 
 tence of the speakers was followed or interrupted 
 by outcries of approval or disapproval or by vol- 
 unteered remarks from the floor which sounded 
 more like boys disputing over base-ball than like 
 an adult 'audience.' Occasionally these outcries 
 were hushed by a simultaneous hiss when the 
 speaker uttered something which the crowd par- 
 ticularly desired to hear, and again they were 
 drowned by a thundering of canes and boot-heels 
 on the floor of the hall. This hubbub reached Its 
 climax when at the end of the speech-making the 
 
86 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 'audience' were invited to question the candi- 
 dates. You must know that the assembly was 
 composed almost entirely of friends of the candi- 
 dates and of the advanced policy which they rep- 
 resented. And yet the first man who got up to 
 ask questions threw a fire-brand into the crowd by 
 declaring that a report was current that one of the 
 candidates was an avowed atheist, and demandino^ 
 that he then and there define his position upon 
 that point. The candidate refused to be cate- 
 chized, and the uproar which followed from the 
 bellowing forth conflicting opinions can find no 
 parallel in America unless it be in the New York 
 gold-room on a black Friday." 
 
 In these scenes we recognize the wild Teutons 
 who were wont to assemble at the full moon in 
 ancient Germany to discharge their political du- 
 ties and enliven the proceedings by pounding on 
 their shields when approving, and groaning under 
 them when disapproving. Their descendants in 
 England and America, whether in broadcloth or 
 in work-clothes, whether with their wives or with- 
 out, obey the ancestral habit and preserve the 
 right to enjoy themselves by making a noise. It 
 is needless to remark, however, that men ca7i be 
 quiet in public as well as in private, though it may 
 require some greater exercise of self-denial to do 
 I so. But if they will not they cannot in all fair- 
 ness make their dereliction in that respect an ex- 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. 87 
 
 cuse for not attending the caucus. It is also ob-l 
 jected that the ''caucus is likely to meet in places\ 
 into which the best men in the community never j 
 enter." To this comes the ready answer that the 
 best men can select their own place of meeting if 
 it be but the public common. Indeed it ought to 
 be definitely understood by ''the best men," cer- 
 tainly, that only criminals seek to avoid the light, 
 and that as a general rule men choose to be in 
 good company and in good places : and the per- 
 petrators of censurable political acts always cast 
 about for the support of these "best men" to help 
 them through with the people. They challenge 
 this support on the ground of " regularity," and 
 their success in obtaining it is the fault of the 
 " best men," who too frequently, it must be ad- 
 mitted, are found supporting political evils by sup- 
 porting those who concoct them. A marked illus- 
 tration of that fact is found in the history of 
 American slavery. 
 
 All through the North were men, who, though 
 trained in the light and benefits of universal free- 
 dom, yet, for party success, gave their vote and 
 influence in behalf of pro-slavery candidates for 
 ofifice : and so strong is party bias that we still see 
 men who are favored for public positions on the 
 ground of their devotion to that evil now happily 
 removed ; and that monuments are erected to the 
 memory of those whose zeal in behalf of slavery in 
 
 CNIVEBSITI 
 
88 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 council and war was pre-eminent. But we may 
 add, that such is the innate love of mankind for 
 justice and freedom, in due time such devotion will 
 take its place among things regarded only with 
 horror. The sword that was drawn and made wet 
 with blood in behalf of slavery is to hang, side by 
 side, with the whip that scarred the slave's back. 
 The monument that is erected over the grave of 
 the slave dealer's champion will awaken pain and 
 sorrow in the breast of those through whose veins 
 his blood descends. We now apologize for our 
 fathers, who in the days of the Puritans laid the 
 whip upon the Quakers' backs : and those coming 
 after us will apologize no less earnestly for them 
 who took life that slavery might be perpetuated. 
 History does not honor that citizen who overlooks 
 grave evils that his party may carry an election. 
 
 If the '* best men " stay away from the caucus, 
 they should be as ready to withhold their support 
 from the work of the caucus which they have rea- 
 son to condemn. All mingle in common citizen- 
 ship, and there is imposed upon all alike the same 
 duties to the country. Upon the best citizens 
 are imposed the greater burden, as their talents, 
 wealth and opportunities permit of political duty 
 not the least of which is to give the right direction 
 to political machinery by due attendance upon the 
 assembly that controls it. 
 \Itis further objected that citizens alone do not 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 •89 
 
 compose the caucus.^ '' Jew and Gentile, the citi- 
 zen who is, and" fhe patriot who in advance is 
 fitting himself to be a citizen by voting as oppor- 
 tunity offers, are all likely to be welcomed if 
 known to be sound and safe." This is so where 
 the best men fail to be present and to exercise the 
 corrective right of challenge : a wearisome labor 
 may be ; but it is only the ease with which such 
 votes may be polled that causes them to be 
 offered. To guard against this as well as other 
 wrongs is simply the plain duty of every citizen : 
 the knowledge of its existence calls upon them to 
 remove it by preventing its exercise. 
 
 It has also been said the caucus is a ''great po 
 litical power in the land, but unknown to the Con 
 stitution and the laws, and this ought to render it 
 an object of suspicion, for extra constitutional 
 powers are always dangerous." Since the fathers 
 of the republic have left recorded, that we owe our 
 separation from Great Britain to the caucus which 
 always has and will exist in a free country, we 
 cannot expect to dismiss it from public use. And 
 it clearly appearing that the danger pointed out 
 exists only when the caucus is given over to the 
 control of the unpatriotic and its work supported 
 by the patriotic for party purposes, it assuredly 
 can be obviated by the presence there of the best 
 men who have no excuse to be derelict in that 
 duty. True, it may prove disagreeable to contend 
 
go THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 against the turbulent element of a community for 
 that which is best for all, yet it is highly useful, 
 and can be regarded only as very honorable, to do 
 so : and it is about the only way good laws and 
 good rulers can be secured. An eminent clergy- 
 man of a large and flourishing society In Chicago * 
 has published these golden words : *' There Is no 
 better place for ministers, elders, deacons, class- 
 leaders and vestrymen to make proof of their 
 moral value In the community than in those places 
 where the determinating steps are taken as to who 
 shall be our rulers," and, *' the better class of citi- 
 zens must take their characters and persons and 
 apparel down to those places, and with unflinching 
 courage cast in the disinfectants. One need not 
 be a partisan, selfish or vulgar, because his sur- 
 roundings are tainted." Also a very keen observer 
 of long experience and a worker In the primaries 
 of New York City being asked, *' Is it not possible 
 for the rougher class often to get control of the 
 caucus and prevent reputable people from voting ? " 
 answered, '' Certainly, when they are in the major- 
 ity." He had seen it done, but, he added, when 
 the better class saw their duty In the right light 
 and took part for the right principles the attempts 
 of the rougher class uniformly failed. A rowdy 
 never expects to carry a caucus for himself merely 
 — at least, only In a limited field, for he knows he 
 * Rev. Dr. Wishard. 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. qj 
 
 would fail of popular support. But he labors for 
 some one who has a reputable standing before the 
 world and who will accept his support and reward 
 him for it. Such alliances are dangerous to the 
 public welfare, and the fault lies here, as in many 
 other cases, with the persons who can if they 
 choose correct it. 
 
 But, if the archaic element cannot be restrained 
 by wholesome respect for public opinion at the 
 caucus, the police can be called in, and the general 
 statute, making it a misdemeanor to disturb a law- 
 ful assembly of the people, invoked. 
 
 Attempts have been made and schemes are in 
 operation in some localities to regulate the call- 
 ing and holding of caucuses by statute. A well 
 known politician of Michigan,*^' in an interesting 
 communication to the public, suggests that politi- 
 cal bodies should be treated in law ** after the 
 manner of corporations, recognize the party as 
 a political subdivision or quasi corporation and 
 make provision for the manner of selecting its 
 candidates as the law provides for the number 
 and manner of selecting county and city officers." 
 For, he urges, " it is just as competent for the law 
 to divide the people by party as by geographical 
 lines, by lines of sentiment and opinion as by lines 
 of the compass," and he would have ''the state, by 
 proper constitutional provisions and statutory en- 
 * Hon. Chas. S. May. 
 
92 
 
 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 actments, provide for all primary meetings of any 
 party; e,g, (i) That the proper committee shall 
 give due notice of the time and place of the caucus 
 and the business to be transacted. (2) That 
 ballot-boxes be furnished and a register kept. (3) 
 That in case of challenge the voter shall make 
 oath that he voted the party ticket at the last elec- 
 tion : and that perjury may be predicated on his 
 oath. (4) That the person having a majority of 
 the vote at the caucus shall be declared duly 
 elected. (5) That a committee act as judges and 
 inspectors of the voting and make certified state- 
 ments thereof." 
 
 Other systems have been devised and some are 
 in use, among which is one that requires a list of 
 all the legal electors affiliating with the party 
 within a given district to be made, and on the day 
 of the caucus for choosing delegates or for nomi- 
 nating local officers, polls are opened and kept 
 open for the day, at which any of the so listed 
 electors may vote. Also, in large cities especially, 
 members of the party of each assembly district or 
 other division of the city, club together or asso- 
 ciate themselves into a partisan club, thus creat- 
 ing a permanent organization for party purposes. 
 New members are affiliated after proposal and fa- 
 vorable report from a committee appointed upon 
 their application. If a member is faithless to the 
 party he is expelled or stricken from the club roll. 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. qo 
 
 The officers of the club are chosen periodically, 
 and the proceedings are kept after the manner of 
 regularly organized bodies. These clubs do all 
 the work of caucuses, choose and send delegates 
 to party conventions and make nominations for 
 local office ; but without specifying further, it will 
 be seen that these systems lose sight of the vol- 
 untary democratic nature of a distinctive caucus 
 assembly. This peculiarity of the caucus is easily 
 sunk in regulations or lost sight of in formularies 
 that may protect the associaters from imposition, 
 as an army is protected from traitors by the rules 
 of war. These regulations tend inevitably to an 
 exclusive working in the interest of the active and 
 aspiring members, while the real caucus is the frees t 
 and most democratic of all oopular instifiittnf|<^. a 
 quality without which, the caucus ceases forthwith 
 to be that '' imperia within an imperia," noted by 
 the experienced Adams, and becomes a machine. 
 Possibly at such ultimate democratic assem- 
 blies, *'one must make up his mind to hear a large 
 amount of senseless talk, to witness a considerable 
 quantity of attempted trickery, to hear some things 
 profane and vulgar, to have his clothes and person 
 saturated with tobacco-smoke, to inhale an atmos- 
 phere reeking with almost everything unchristian," 
 to quote the description given by the clergyman 
 above referred to ; yet as a successful general can- 
 not stand aloof and fight his raw levies, and win 
 
94 ^-^^ AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 victories, so cannot_ the best^ citizen wi n an elec- 
 tion, and refuse political affiliation with his crude 
 neighbor and would-be fellow-partisan. 
 
 There seems to be, however, a practical way of 
 rjeducing all these annoyances and miscarriages of 
 tjhe caucus to the minimum. It is this : avoid lar^e 
 kssemblie^,.^ Do not bring the electors oFa large 
 ^nd populous district into one caucus. Increase 
 the number of caucuses by assigning so small a ter- 
 ritory to its jurisdiction that the number of all the 
 electors within it will not be too great for every 
 resident to be known by sight to his fellows. This 
 may be easily effected in the country, as a cau- 
 cus there can be assigned for each small political 
 division, as, for example, a school district. The 
 members of the party within such limited territory 
 can easily get together at the schoolhouse or at a 
 neighbor's house, and elect one or more delegates 
 to a township or county convention, as the require- 
 ment may be. This will work without much fric- 
 tion, and the best men of the district can always 
 and easily meet with their next-door neighbors, 
 and consult with them very near home. In the 
 cities and large towns, where it is not possible, 
 owing to the density of the population, for each 
 man to well know all his neighbors as it is in the 
 country, yet many of the evils complained of there 
 can be obviated by the small caucus district. Let 
 the districts be as small as the situation admits of 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAUCUS. 
 
 95 
 
 for gathering together the resident electors. If it 
 is necessary to invoke the law-making power to 
 effect it let it be done, and the chances are, less 
 complaint will arise from such action than from 
 regulations established by statute for opening a 
 caucus, and which may involve an election in liti- 
 gation on the ground that they have not been prop- 
 erly complied with. Give a caucus to every one, 
 two or three blocks of the city, requiring one for 
 one hundred, two hundred or three hundred of 
 people — three hundred should be the maximum 
 number ; some hall, or common, or street corner to 
 be the place of meeting. Then with a list of the 
 legal electors of the caucus district the opportuni- 
 ties for fraud will be reduced, as well as all other 
 evil work. The duty of such a caucus will be sim- 
 ply to choose delegates to represent the electors 
 in a ward or city convention, which can speedily be 
 disposed of and men of character selected. If the 
 present statutes are not sufficient to prevent dis- 
 turbance one could be enacted giving to the of- 
 ficers of the caucus power to arrest offenders and 
 bring them before a justice or other official for pun- 
 ishment. Poll lists can be kept and all illegal votes 
 offered be challenged and excluded. The adminis- 
 tration of an oath can be provided for, sanctioned 
 by the pains or penalties of perjury. With such 
 small caucus districts and confinement of each elec- 
 tor to his own, the best men of the worst cities and 
 
q6 T^HE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 of the worst portions of any city or large town can, 
 if they so elect, make the surroundings of their 
 caucus uniformly tolerable, and secure practical 
 fairness in the results. Indeed the presence itself 
 of decent men in a small crowd will check turbu- 
 lence, and a courageous stand made for good 
 order by them will rarely fail to win. But if turbu- 
 lence and fraud do destroy the fair expression of a 
 caucus, then a refusal to abide by its results, and 
 the moral certainty that such a refusal will be per- 
 severed in, will act powerfully as a preventive of 
 that evil. But fac'*ons and rivalries cause in the 
 main turbulent and fraudulent caucuses. They, 
 however, must have the aid of the respectable 
 members of the party to make headway. And 
 if the best men, who complain they cannot attend 
 a caucus because of turbulence and fraud, them- 
 selves form factions or support them when formed, 
 there seems to be little remedy for the evils so con- 
 stantly denounced. That all men may attend a 
 caucus without loss of self-respect is certainly clear, 
 but it is not clear tj^at the best may, if they pro- 
 mote faction, and push its fortunes. And if 
 " good " men would maintain "■ self-respect " by 
 properly performing their share of political work, 
 at the time and place the *' bad " perform theirs, 
 and which they perform so effectively as to cause 
 the former to complain of them, the dawn of the 
 political millennium would soon appear above the 
 horizon. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CONDUCTING A CAUCUS. 
 
 A CAUCUS In session should be conducted ac- 
 cording to the rules that usually govern all delib- 
 erative bodies, otherwise it would be impossible 
 to obtain much satisfactory work out of it. As it 
 is a primary body called into being by the volun- 
 tary act of those present, there is no one author- 
 ized to act as chairman or presiding officer, and 
 some one should be selected to perform that duty. 
 This may easily be done, and in a methodical 
 manner. At the hour appointed for the assem- 
 bling the caucus and electors being present, a 
 member, usually one of the local committee, if 
 there is one, otherwise, some well known resident 
 of the district, rises and may say : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, it is the hour for organizing the 
 caucus; you will please be ceated and come to 
 order." 
 
 Upon which all present will cease other business 
 and give their attention to the speaker, who may 
 further say : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, it Is necessary a chairman should 
 be chosen ; will some one nominate one of our 
 number for that position ? " 
 7 97 
 
q8 the AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 One or more names will be announced, and the 
 speaker will proceed : *' I first heard the name of 
 
 Mr. and will put his nomination to vote ; are 
 
 you ready for the question?". No dissent being 
 heard he proceeds : ** All who are in favor of 
 
 Mr. serving as chairman will please say aye." 
 
 The ayes having voted he will then say, '* All op- 
 posed will say no." The noes having voted he will 
 declare the result. But if the vote is so close he 
 cannot well decide it, he will so state, and ask all 
 present to be seated, and then say, " All in favor 
 of the nominee will rise and stand to be counted." 
 Which done, he will state the result and request 
 all again to be seated, and then ask those opposed 
 to rise and stand and be counted; and will also 
 declare the result. If there is a tie he will so 
 state, and then vote himself in favor and declare 
 th-e nominee elected or will not vote and declare it 
 lost, and then take the next name in order of 
 those he heard nominated and proceed with it as 
 before, and so on until a chairman is selected. 
 Upon the announcement of the vote that decides 
 the choice of chairman the speaker may then say, 
 
 '' Gentlemen, Mr. has been chosen chairman 
 
 of this caucus. He will please come forward and 
 take the chair." The gentleman so elected will 
 directly comply, and the person so far acting will 
 take his seat among the electors. 
 
 The chairman will now conduct the business 
 
CONDUCTING A CAUCUS. gg 
 
 and may say,/' Gentlemen, it will be well to elect 
 a secretary. If this is your pleasure some one will 
 nominate a person to act." Nominations being 
 made the chairman will proceed with them as 
 before was done in choosing the chairman. The 
 secretary being chosen, the chairman, or some 
 one he shall call upon to do so, will state the busi- 
 ness that the caucus is to perform. If this is well 
 enough known the chair may simply state, " Gen- 
 tlemen, the caucus is fully organized. What is 
 your further pleasure?" He will now entertain 
 all such motions as are made germain to the busi- 
 ness to be done and put them to vote, declare the 
 result of each vote, and generally direct and expe- 
 dite the business of the session. 
 
 If delegates are to be chosen by ballot or nomi- 
 nations made for local offices, tellers to assist the 
 secretary are generally selected by the chair, 
 though the caucus may vote to have tellers and 
 also select them ; but if the caucus does not direct 
 otherwise the chair selects suitable persons to per- 
 form that duty. He may do so by simply saying, 
 
 '' Mr. E and Mr. F , will you please act 
 
 as tellers." If they decline he may select oth- 
 ers. Tellers being selected the chair may state, 
 ''Gentlemen, you are to choose delegates to at- 
 tend the (township or ward, as the case may be) 
 convention." Or if to nominate candidates for 
 local office he will so announce, and then state, 
 
lOO 7'^^ AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 ** Gentlemen, you will please nominate your candi- 
 dates." Time being given for this purpose, which 
 may be improved to advantage by those desirous 
 of choosing fit men, the chair will then further say, 
 " Gentlemen, this is an informal ballot. You will 
 please come to the secretary's table and deposit 
 
 your ballots for " (stating what). The tellers 
 
 will receive the ballots and the secretary will take 
 down the name of each voter. A right of challenge 
 always exists and may be exercised now. When 
 made, it is to be determined by the tellers and 
 secretary, from whose decision an appeal lies to the 
 caucus. The chair takes note of the appeal, states 
 the grounds of the challenge, and submits it to the 
 vote of the electors as he would any other matter. 
 If a statute directs an oath to be administered in 
 such cases, that being tendered to the challenged 
 voter and taken by him closes out the challenge, 
 and his brjlot is received and counted. But in 
 absence of a statutory oath the challenge is re- 
 ceived and determined as before stated. While 
 the challenge is pending the voting ceases, to be 
 renewed on its being disposed of. 
 
 All the electors appearing to have voted, as a 
 cautionary matter the chair will say, ** Have all 
 voted ? " A brief pause to observe whether there 
 are any more votes to be cast, he will continue, 
 '' You will please count the ballots." Upon which 
 the tellers will proceed to make the count, which 
 
CONDUCTING A CAUCUS, lOi 
 
 will be recorded by the secretary, and on the di- 
 rection of the chair read to the house. If the 
 number of the ballots cast fails to agree with the 
 list made by the secretary it is usual to take an- 
 other ballot, and to prevent mistake the secretary 
 may call the list and the voter deposit his vote as 
 his name is called. If any name has been omitted 
 it may now be added. When the roll is called 
 through, the ballots are counted and the result de- 
 clared. If no one has a majority another ballot is 
 taken, and so on until a majority of the votes are 
 ofiven to the same man. 
 
 After the secretary has made one list of those 
 voting at the caucus he is not required to make 
 another, only noting on the one already made the 
 depositing of the ballot by the elector listed. An- 
 other way is sometimes practised in localities 
 where every one is known by sight. It is for the 
 secretary to pronounce aloud, for all to hear, the 
 name of the person voting as he offers his ballot, 
 the tellers not depositing the ballots so rapidly 
 but a challenge may be interposed if intended to 
 be. But a written list is preferable. This can be 
 retained for future reference, and the secretary may 
 so preserve the vote that it may show not only the 
 number of ballots taken but each man voting at 
 each ballot. When all the delegates are chosen or 
 all the candidates nominated, as the case may be, 
 the secretary will make up a report or record of 
 
I02 THE AMERICAN CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 the proceedings, briefly setting forth, but preserv- 
 ing accuracy and clearness, the business that has 
 been done, to be signed by himself and the chair- 
 man. 
 
 This report he will give to the chairman of the 
 delegation or to a delegate chosen, to be by them 
 presented to the Committee on Credentials of the 
 convention to which they are elected. It is the 
 certificate of their election and their authority to 
 appear at the convention as representatives of the 
 caucus. In case of nominees for office the record 
 is given to one of them and is their authority for 
 appearing on the party ticket. 
 
 The following forms may serve for calling and 
 reporting the proceedings of the caucus : 
 
 A CAUCUS. 
 
 A caucus of the electors of the 
 
 will be held at on 
 
 instant for the purpose of selecting delegates 
 to attend a to be held on the 
 
 at 
 A general attendance of the electors is expected. 
 Dated, A. B., Committee, 
 
 In case the caucus is called to nominate candi- 
 dates for office, that should be inserted in the no- 
 tice in pl^ce of the words *' selecting delegates to 
 attend," etc. 
 
CONDUCTING A CAUCUS. 103 
 
 REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS. 
 
 At a caucus held at 
 
 on the A. B. was chosen chairman, 
 
 and C. D. was chosen secretary. There were 
 electors present. Upon balloting 
 for delegates to attend the conven- 
 
 tion to be held at on 
 
 the following named gentlemen received a major- 
 ity of all the votes cast and were duly elected, viz,: 
 Messrs. T. D., G. H., etc. 
 
 C. D., Secretary, A. B., Chairman, 
 
 The foregoing directions are brief and will serve 
 the purposes of a small body of men, for which 
 they are intended. Large caucuses are not de- 
 sirable, and should, where practicable, be avoided. 
 Our country is getting too populous to gather all 
 the electors of a very considerable extent of ter- 
 ritory into one caucus. Densely packed rooms, 
 with little opportunity to see and hear what ought 
 to be seen and heard, cause much of the unfairness 
 complained of. Relief must be sought in that di- 
 rection which best accords with the nature of the 
 institution itself ; wherefore make the caucus to 
 accommodate the number of electors and resort to 
 representation in conventions for large territory or 
 dense population, the watch-word being, ** Ever}^ 
 
I04 
 
 THE AMERICA J\r CAUCUS SYSTEM. 
 
 elector to unite in caucus with his neighbor, to be 
 represented in a convention ; to nominate men for 
 public office — the legislator to make the laws, the 
 executive to execute them, the judge to point out 
 their application." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abimelech, 26. 
 Adams, John, 2, 4, 40. 
 Adams, John Q., 49. 
 Adams, Samuel, 3, 4, 82. 
 Advice of an old politician, 32. 
 Anecdotes of — 
 
 " Buchanan, Jas., 50. 
 
 " Crocket, David, 57. 
 
 *' Cruger, " Ditto," 48. 
 
 '* Livingston Family, 27. 
 Throop, Gov. of Ga., 5. 
 
 Ballots, Burning of, 70, 71. 
 Burke, Edmund 47, 50, 60. 
 
 Cass, Lewis, 50. 
 Caucus — 
 
 " Adoption of the word, 4-8. 
 
 " Attendance upon, a duty, 79, 81, 87, 90,96. 
 
 " Calling of, 102. 
 
 " Control of, by statute, 91. 
 
 " Conducting one, 97-103, 
 
 " Debate upon, in the U. S. Senate, 6, 39. 
 
 " Discussion at, 81. 
 
 " Early use of, 25, 26, 29. 
 
 " Growth of the system, 64-77. 
 
 " Limitation of, as to numbers, 94, 103. 
 
 " Measures, not men, 32. 
 
 " Origin of the word, 1-4, 9, 30. 
 
 " Proceedings in, 75, 96. 
 
 " Scenes at, 2, 8^. 
 
 " Turbulence at, suggestions on, 94, 
 
 " Voluntary nature of, 93. 
 
 105 
 
I06 INDEX. 
 
 Citizens, Duty of, 88, 90. 
 
 Clay, Henry 58, 61. 
 
 Clergymen, etc.. Duty of, 90. 
 
 Clinton, George, control of N. Y., 67, 74. 
 
 Colonies, American, 18, 65, 
 
 Connecticut, The plan of choosmg an executive, 66. 
 
 Conventions, Political, 75, 76. 
 
 Cooley, Thomas M., Views of, 78- 
 
 " Counting out " Jay, 69. 
 
 Democrat party, 75. 
 Dickens, Sketch from, 54. 
 
 Edinburgh Statesman, Sketch from, 55. 
 English System, 46. 
 
 Fable of the frogs, 9. 
 Federalists, Federals, 36, 39, 40. 
 
 Germans, ancient customs, 12. 
 Gladstone, William E., 47. 
 Government, Oldest representative, 23. 
 
 Israel, Tribes of, 10. 
 
 Jay, John, 68, 70, 73. 
 Jotham, Allegory by, 27 
 
 Kings, Divine right of, 23. 
 
 Lincoln, A., 59, 61. 
 
 Listing the electors, 95, 100, loi. 
 
 London Times, Extract from, 7. 
 
 Macaulay, Thomas B,, 47, 53, 60. 
 May, Charles S., Views of, 91. 
 Mizpah, Election at, 11. 
 
 New York caucus and conventions, 68, 75. 
 Nominations, self, and caucus compared, 45-63. 
 Nominees, Presidential, 75-6. 
 
 " Self-discussed, 45,^61. 
 
 " Scenes on, 50, 55, 57, 59. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 107 
 
 Parliament, Nature of, 48. 
 Parties, Cause for, 32, 41-3. 
 Political power, how directed, 21-44. 
 
 " Clubs, 92, 
 Plymouth Colony, 19. 
 Principles, Longevity of, 41. 
 
 Representatives, Instructions to, 48. 
 
 Republican party, 36. 
 
 Rhode Island plantations, 18, 19, 21. 
 
 Tennessee, Resolutions of, 5. 
 Tory party, 33. 
 Town-meetings, 16, 22, 80. 
 
 Williams, Roger, 13. 
 Wishard, Rev. Dr., Views of, 9a 
 Whig party, 33. 
 
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