Samuel Harrison Smith, a prominent newspaperman, was an early proprietor. In 1810,
Joseph Gales took over as sole proprietor. He and
William Winston Seaton were its publishers for more than 50 years. At first, Gales was the
Senate's sole reporter, and Seaton reported on the
House of Representatives. The
Intelligencer supported the
Jefferson,
Madison, and
Monroe administrations, and Gales and Seaton were selected as the official printers of Congress from 1819 to 1829. In addition to printing government documents, they began compiling their reports of floor debates and publishing them in the
Register of Debates, a forerunner of the
Congressional Record. Gales and Seaton flourished during the "
Era of Good Feelings," a period of relative political complacency, but after Congress was split between the
Whigs and
Democrats, the partners lost their official patronage. From the 1830s to the 1850s, the
National Intelligencer was one of the nation's leading Whig newspapers, and continued to hold conservative, unionist principles down to the Civil War, supporting
John Bell and the
Constitutional Union Party in the 1860 presidential election. Gales died in 1860 and Seaton retired in 1864.
James Clarke Welling, who became President of
Columbian University, served on the editorial staff during the
Civil War. In 1865, the
National Intelligencer was taken over by Snow, Coyle & Co. John F. Coyle had been an employee at the paper's offices, and continued to publish the paper despite a half million dollars' worth of debts. On November 30, 1869, the statistician and economist
Alexander del Mar bought the paper for cash and merged it with the
Washington Express. The short-lived
Daily National Intelligencer and Washington Express's last daily publication in Washington was January 10, 1870. Thereafter it was published weekly in New York until at least April 1871. It later became the New York daily
City and National Intelligencer with del Mar as editor and publisher, and a circulation of about 2,000 in 1872.{{cite book ==See also==