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Thomas Ritchie (1778-1854)
edited the Richmond Enquirer from 1804 to 1845 and was one of
the South's most-quoted Democratic Party spokesmen. The period
from the 1830s to the 1850s was the high point of partisan
journalism in the United States, and editors like Ritchie helped
both state and national political leaders formulate their
policies and sell those policies and candidates to the voters.
An opponent during the 1820s of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay
and their plans to use the power of the national government to
promote economic growth, Ritchie and many Democratic Party
leaders in Virginia and in the South supported states' rights
faction leaders such as Andrew Jackson. In 1845 former President
Martin Van Buren asked Ritchie to move to Washington, D.C., to
create a new national newspaper for the Democrats. Ritchie
edited the Union until he retired in 1851, and was widely
respected as one of the most influential Democrats in the United
States. |
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Thomas
Ritchie.
The Library of Virginia
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