Nomination and appointment to office were to be made only to loyal party members. “Give them to good and true and useful friends who will enjoy the emolument if there is any, and who will use the influence to our benefit, if any influence is conferred by the office,” advised Albany Regency leader Silas Wright to a party colleague. “This is the long and short of the rule by which to act.”30 Such a rule created a radically new understanding of political patronage and officeholding, one that virtually repudiated all that the revolutionaries of 1776 had sought.
