Antedating of "Democrat Party"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, Duane Campbell wrote:

> That was a Gingrich -- blessed be his name -- initiative. I, too, grew up
> in an era where capital-D Democrats were Democratic. And I still feel
> uncomfortable using Democrat as an adjective. But I force myself to do
> it, not for partisan reasons but because it is clearer. For instance, you
> don't always have to say "capital-D" to differentiate it from
> "democratic" as a political system which Democrats do not exclusively
> own.

This is a longstanding Republican fetish that predated Gingrich by
decades.  Safire's New Political Dictionary states: "In 1955, Leonard
Hall, a former Republican National Chairman, began referring to the
'Democrat' rather than the 'Democratic' party, a habit begun by Thomas E.
Dewey.  Hall dropped the 'ic,' he said, because 'I think their claims that
they represent the great mass of the people, and we don't is just a lot of
bunk.'  The University of Virginia's Atcheson L. Hench said of this usage
in American Speeh magazine: 'Whether they have meant to imply that the
party was no longer democratic, or whether they banked on the harsher
sound pattern of the new name; whether they wanted to strengthen the
impression that they were speaking for a new Republican party by using a
new name for the opposition, or whether they had other reasons, the fact
remains that ... highly influential speakers ... used the shorter
adjective.  Some Democrats suggested retaliating by shortening Republican
to Publican, but the National Committee overruled them, explaining that
Republican 'is the name by which our opponents' product is known and
mistrusted."

When I search JSTOR, I don't find any article by Hench on this subject.
The OED has an 1890 citation for "Democrat Party."  Here's earlier:

1855 _N.Y. Daily Times_ 23 Nov. 3 (ProQuest)  The Republican and Democrat
parties have been formed by it.

Fred Shapiro


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