In colonial days, when the struggle began between Crown and Colonist, the colonial patriots formed clubs to designate their candidates for public office. In Massachusetts these clubs were known as "caucuses," a word whose derivation is unknown, but which has now become fixed in our political vocabulary. These early caucuses in Boston have been described as follows: "Mr. Samuel Adams' 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 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 the parties fixed upon, which they distributed on 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 mind." As the revolutionary propaganda increased in momentum, caucuses assumed a more open character. They were a sort of informal town meeting, where neighbors met and agreed on candidates and the means of electing them. After the adoption of the Constitution, the same methods were continued, though modified to suit the 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.