In 1822 Clinton declined to stand for reelection. Tammany Hall was considered so invincible in the city that the Clintonites and the remnant of the Federalists refused to nominate contesting candidates for Congress and the Legislature. Experience demonstrating that almost all the voters cast their ballots for the “regular” ticket without asking questions, competition for a place on that ticket, which now was equivalent to election, became sharp. When, on October 30, the nominating committee reported the name of M. M. Noah for the office of Sheriff, Benjamin Romaine moved to have that of Peter H. Wendover substituted. Two factors were at work here; one was religious prejudice against Noah, who was a Jew; the other and greater, was the struggle between the partizans of Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams and William H. Crawford to get control of Tammany Hall, as a necessary preliminary to the efforts of each for the nomination for President.[3] Romaine was an Adams supporter and could easily have nominated a ticket independent of Tammany Hall, but it would have lacked “regularity,” and hence popular support. A row ensued; and while Noah’s party rushed out of Tammany Hall claiming the “regular” nomination, the other faction, by the light of a solitary candle, passed resolutions denouncing Noah and claiming that Wendover was the “regular” nominee. Each of the candidates put himself before the people, declaring that a majority of the nominating committee favored him as “regular.” The leaders of the organization inclined to Noah, as one of its heads, but Wendover skillfully appealed to Anti-Semitic bigotry and gathered a large following. The Sachems dared not interfere between them, and each in consequence had a room in Tammany Hall, where his tickets were distributed and his agents made their headquarters. Noah was defeated at the polls; but his defeat did not impair his influence in Tammany Hall. He was a person of singular ability. A facile writer and effective manipulator, he maintained his hold. “Regularity,” then, was the agency by which the leaders imposed their candidates upon the thousands of voters who, from their stores and benches, offices and farms, went to the polls to deposit a list of names prepared for them. The voters were expected only to vote; the leaders assumed the burden of determining for whom the voting should be done. An instance of the general recognition of this fact was given in 1820 when the counties of Suffolk, Queens, Kings and Dutchess voted to discontinue the practice of holding Senatorial conventions in Tammany Hall because a fair expression of the wishes of a great proportion of the Democratic-Republican electors was not obtainable there. At the same time, and for years later, complaints were frequent that the ward meetings had long since become an object of so little interest that they were nearly neglected; and that a small knot of six or eight men managed them for their own purposes.