The Library of Virginia
 
Portrait of Thomas Ritchie 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.

Thomas Ritchie. 
The Library of Virginia