Thomas Ritchie (November 5, 1778 – July 3, 1854) of
Virginia was a leading
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
newspaper journalist, editor and publisher.
Biography
He
read law and medicine, but, instead of practicing either, set up a bookstore in
Richmond, Virginia in 1803. He bought out the Republican newspaper the ''
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." 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
Spencer Roane
Spencer Roane (April 4, 1762 – September 4, 1822) was a Virginia lawyer, politician and jurist. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates for six years and a year in the Commonwealth's small executive branch (Council of State). The majority ...
and Dr.
John Brockenbrough
John Brockenbrough (1775–1852) was a business man and civic leader in Richmond, Virginia. He was president of the Bank of Virginia. His home in Richmond's Court End District later served as the White House of the Confederacy.
Career
Brockenbro ...
of the
Virginia State Bank. Richmond was a violent frontier town when Ritchie arrived. Controversial rival journalist and Jefferson opponent
James T. Callender was found drowned in three feet of water in 1803. Nonetheless, Ritchie set up a press and began advocating restrictions on free blacks as well as slave manumissions. Lawyer and ''Richmond Enquirer'' founding editor Meriwether Jones died in a duel on August 3, 1806. John Daly Burk and Skelton Jones (Meriwether's brother) also both died in duels before completing a projected four volume history of Richmond. Ritchie editorialized against South Carolina and Georgia reopening the transatlantic slave trade, and later for U.S. intervention in the
War of 1812. Political rivals also could find themselves excoriated in the press, and even President
James Monroe was not immune. A faction of the Democratic-Republican party, once nicknamed the
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.
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
May 7: The almost completely deaf Beethoven premieres his Ninth Symphony
Events
January–March
* January 8 – After much controversy, Michael Faraday is finally elected as a member of the Royal Society, with only one vote against h ...
, and next that of
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
in
1828
Events
January–March
* January 4 – Jean Baptiste Gay, vicomte de Martignac succeeds the Comte de Villèle, as Prime Minister of France.
* January 8 – The Democratic Party of the United States is organized.
* January 22 – Arthu ...
. Ritchie favored the "Old Republican" "principles of '98, '99" against what he considered the corrupting influence of
Henry Clay
Henry Clay Sr. (April 12, 1777June 29, 1852) was an American attorney and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state, al ...
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
1844 US presidential election, Ritchie supported
James K. Polk because of Polk's support for the
annexation of Texas
The Texas annexation was the 1845 annexation of the Republic of Texas into the United States. Texas was admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845.
The Republic of Texas declared independence from the Republic of Mexico o ...
. Polk brought Ritchie to
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
to edit the national paper ''
The Union'' (1845 to 1851). Ritchie supported the
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–Ame ...
, 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
*
Charles Henry Ambler – Preeminent Virginia & West Virginia historian, and Thomas Ritchie biographer
*
History of Virginia
The written History of Virginia begins with documentation by the first Spanish explorers to reach the area in the 1500s, when it was occupied chiefly by Powhatan, Algonquian, Virginia Iroquoian, Iroquoian, and Virginia Siouan, Siouan peoples. I ...
*
History of West Virginia
The history of West Virginia stems from the 1861 Wheeling Convention, which was an assembly of northwestern Virginia, Virginian Southern Unionists, who aimed to repeal the Ordinance of Secession that Virginia made during the American Civil War ...
References
* Charles H. Ambler,
Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics' (1913)
* Pearson, C. C. "Ritchie, Thomas" in ''Dictionary of American Biography, Volume 8'' (1935)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ritchie, Thomas
Journalists from Virginia
Writers from Richmond, Virginia
1778 births
1854 deaths
19th-century American journalists
19th-century American male writers
American male journalists
American duellists