[Ads-l] caucus, to clarify

[Joel Berson]

      From: Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Friday, June 26, 2015 7:56 AM
 Subject: [ADS-L] caucus, to clarify
   
To clarify, I do not claim--nor did William Bentley, to my knowledge--that the meetings once convened by Elisha Cooke Jr. continued uninterrupted into the 1760s. 


JSB:  Here I was merely saying that the use of the phrase "formerly met" might imply to a reader that the Caucus merely changed its location, having met at (perhaps) Cooke's previously and now was meeting at Dawes'.
JSB:  I see, however, that Wikipedia's "Boston Caucus" implies there was continuity, and its source John K. Alexander (2011; on-line) says (p. 16) that the caucus was active in the 1750s.  That's news to me, and I will look into Alexander's evidence.  (By the way, he quotes from the 1760 quotation.)


Rather, I mean that the latter, later, meetings may have borrowed a name from the earlier convener--
JSB:  I've been hoping that the 1760s group _revived_ the eponymic name of the 1720s group, and that someone will eventually find "caucus" from the 1740s or earlier.


somewhat as the modern Olympic Games borrowed an ancient name, without any pretense of continuous operation. But that outsiders mostly were unaware of the (putatively) revived name.
So far, I've seen no good evidence for the proposed Algonquin etymology, nor for caulkers, nor for kaukos (cup). Caucus as a little-known name for the north wind may or may not have been in the mind of John Eliot (Biographical Dictionary, 1809 p. 472-3) who wrote of the caucus: "It was a matter of policy likewise to assemble in that [north] part of town. It had the effect to awake the _north wind_, and stir the _waters_ of the _troubled sea_." ("Troubled sea" may be an allusion to the wicked in Isaiah 57:20, AV.) If so, it appears to have been a speculative afterthought association and not based on the earlier meetings (at Dawes' or Cooke's), which were not located in the north end. The large (1490 sq. ft.) house of Thomas Dawes,

JSB:  I wouldn't be surprised if Cooke Jr.'s house was large also.  He was one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts.


 where meetings took place upstairs, was located on Purchase Street, next door, by the way, to John Adams.
"Cooke's" may not be behind the largely-misunderstood "caucus," but it might be the best guess now.


Stephen Goranson

http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/



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