Thomas Ritchie (journalist)

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For other people with the same name, see Thomas Ritchie.
Portrait of Thomas Ritchie

Thomas Ritchie (November 5, 1778 – July 3, 1854) of Virginia was a leading American newspaper journalist, editor and publisher.

Biography

He

Richmond Enquirer in 1804, and made it a financial and political success, as editor and publisher for 41 years. The paper appeared three times a week. Thomas Jefferson said of the Enquirer: "I read but a single newspaper, Ritchie's Enquirer, the best that is published or ever has been published in America."[1]
Ritchie wrote the stirring partisan editorials, clipped the news from Washington and New York papers, and did most of the local reporting himself. For 25 years he was state printer, a method by which his political friends subsidized their most articulate voice.

Ritchie was a leader of the "Richmond Junto" that controlled the Republican state committee, originally with Ritchie's relatives

quids and thought more radical than Jefferson, grew increasingly pro-slavery, anti-foreigner and anti-Catholic over time. Committed to democratic reform in representation of the western counties and full manhood suffrage (for whites), Ritchie promoted the 1829 Virginia state constitutional convention. A modernizer, Ritchie came to promote public schools and extensive state internal improvements
.

Birthplace of Thomas Ritchie, Tappahannock, Virginia

In national politics, Ritchie's influence rested first on an alliance with New York Senator Martin Van Buren. They both promoted William H. Crawford's presidential candidacy in 1824, and next that of Andrew Jackson in 1828. Ritchie favored the "Old Republican" "principles of '98, '99" against what he considered the corrupting influence of Henry Clay and the divisive tactics of John C. Calhoun, whose nullification and Southern-party policies Ritchie detested. Late in his life, Ritchie denounced abolitionists but supported gradual emancipation.

In the

annexation of Texas. Polk brought Ritchie to Washington to edit the national paper The Union (1845 to 1851). Ritchie supported the Compromise of 1850, but the new paper never was as influential as the Enquirer. Meanwhile, Ritchie had lost his Virginia base, as his son and namesake took over the Richmond Enquirer. In 1846, Thomas Ritchie Jr. killed Richmond Whig founder and editor John Hampden Pleasants
in a duel.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Thomas Jefferson to William Short, September 8, 1823". Retrieved 2006-09-30.
  2. ^ Dabney, Richmond: the Story of a City (University Press of Virginia, 1990 rev. ed), pp. 66-67.
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