As the editor and publisher of the Richmond Enquirer for over forty years. Thomas Ritchie was one of the most influential journalists in the South in the first half of the nineteenth century, and his newspaper--established with the encouragement of Thomas Jefferson--was one of the principal voices of the Democratic party in the United States. Ritchie relinquished control of the Enquirer to his sons in 1845 to go to Washington to start the Union. the semiofficial organ of the Polk administration.

Ritchie was born in Rappahannock, Essex County, Virginia, on 5 November 1778. The small village, perched high on a bluff overlooking the Rappahannock River, was one of the many small ports along southern rivers navigable to the small ships of that age. Ritchie's father. Archibald Ritchie, had immigrated to America around 1740. He was one of the numerous Scottish merchants, clerks, and factors who sought their fortunes in the tobacco trade...