embers
of Congress respectively held secret meetings or caucuses, chiefly for
the purpose of agreeing upon candidates for the vice-presidency and
making some plans for the canvass. It became customary to nominate
candidates in such congressional caucuses, but there was much hostile
comment upon the system as undemocratic. Sometimes the "favourite son"
of a state was nominated by the legislature, but as the means of travel
improved, the nominating convention came to be preferred. In 1824 there
were four candidates for the presidency,--Adams, Jackson, Clay, and
Crawford. Adams was nominated by the legislatures of most of the New
England states; Clay by the legislature of Kentucky, followed by the
legislatures of Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, and Louisiana; Crawford by the
legislature of Virginia; and Jackson by a mass convention of the people
of Blount County in Tennessee, followed by local conventions in many
other states. The congressional caucus met and nominated Crawford, but
this endorsement did not help him,[15] and this method was no longer
tried. In 1832 for the first time the candidates were all nominated in
national conventions.

[Footnote 15: Stanwood, _History of Presidential Elections_, pp.
80-83.]

[Sidenote: Nomination conventions.]
[Sidenote: The "primary."]
These conventions, as fully developed, are representative bodies
chosen for the specific purpose of nominating candidates and making
those declarations of principle and policy known as "platforms." Each
state is allowed twice as many delegates as it has electoral votes.
The delegates are chosen by local conventions in their several
states, viz., two for each congressional district by the party
convention of that district, and four for the whole state (called
delegates-at-large) by the state convention. As each convention is
composed of delegates from primaries, it is the composition of the
primaries which determines that of the local conventions, and it is
the composition of the local conventions which determines that of the
national.[16] The "primary" is the smallest nominating convention. It
stands in somewhat the same relation to the national convention as the
relation of a township or ward to the whole United States. A primary
is a little caucus of all the voters of one party who live within the
bounds of the township or ward. It differs in composition from the
town-meeting in that all its members belong to one party. It has two
duties: one is to n