A private meeting of the leading politicians of a party to agree upon the plans to be pursued in an approaching election.
Gordon's History of the American Revolution, 1788, contains the earliest account of this word.
"The word caucus, and its derivative caucusing, are often used in Boston. All my repeated applications to different gentlemen have not furnished me with a satisfactory account of its origin...... More than fifty years ago, Mr. Samuel Adams's father, and twenty others, one or two from he north end of the town, where all 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. When they had settled it, they separated, and used each their particular influence within his own circle," &c. Vol. I. p. 240.
"From the above remarks of Dr. Gordon on this word," says Mr. Pickering, "it would seem that these meetings were in some measure under the direction of men concerned in the 'ship business;' and I had therefore thought it not improbable that caucus might be a corruption of caulkers', the word meetings being understood. I was afterwards informed that several gentlemen in Salem and Boston believed this to be the origin of the word."
I'll be a voter, and this is a big character, able to shoulder a steamboat, and carry any candidate that the caucus at Baltimore may set up against the people. What's the people to a caucus? Nothing but a dead ague to an earthquake.--Crockett's Tour, p. 206.
On the whole, this may be called a very useful word, the sense being so well understood in every part of the Union.