needs of the new party alignments. In this informal manner, local
and even congressional candidates were named.

Washington was the unanimous choice of the nation. In the third
presidential election, John Adams was the tacitly accepted
candidate of the Federalists and Jefferson of the
Democratic-Republicans, and no formal nominations seem to have
been made. But from 1800 to 1824 the presidential candidates were
designated by members of Congress in caucus. It was by this means
that the Virginia Dynasty fastened itself upon the country. The
congressional caucus, which was one of the most arrogant and
compact political machines that our politics has produced,
discredited itself by nominating William H. Crawford (1824), a
machine politician, whom the public never believed to be of
presidential caliber. In the bitter fight that placed John Quincy
Adams in the White House and made Jackson the eternal enemy of
Clay, the congressional caucus met its doom. For several years,
presidential candidates were nominated by various informal
methods. In 1828 a number of state legislatures formally
nominated Jackson. In several States the party members of the
legislatures in caucus nominated presidential candidates. DeWitt
Clinton was so designated by the New York legislature in 1812 and
Henry Clay by the Kentucky legislature in 1822. Great mass
meetings, often garnished with barbecues, were held in many parts
of the country in 1824 for indorsing the informal nominations of
the various candidates.

But none of these methods served the purpose. The President was a
national officer, backed by a national party, and chosen by a
national electorate. A national system of nominating the