Cau'cus, n.

n. A meeting preliminary to an election, or to a general meeting of a party, for the selection of candidates for political offices, or for promoting party interests.

More than fifty years ago, Mr. Samuel Adams's father, and twenty others, one or two from the north end of the town, where all the ship business is carried on, used to meet, make a caucus, and lay their plan for introducing certain persons into places of trust and power. Gordon, 1788.

☞ This word is probably corrupted from calkers' meeting. On the 2d of March, 1770, a quarrel occurred in Boston between the soldiers and some ropemakers, in which the latter were overpowered and beaten. The people were greatly exasperated at this, and sought opportunities for retaliation. On the 5th of the same month, in a similar affray, the soldiers fired upon the people of the town, killing and wounding several. This induced the ropemakers and calkers, whose occupations brought them into contact, to form a society, at the meetings of which inflammatory addresses were delivered, and the most violent resolutions passed against the British government and its agents and instruments in America. The tories in derision called these assemblies calkers' meetings, and the term was at length corrupted to caucus. Knickerbocker Mag.