Ritchie took up teaching and took charge of an academy in
Fredericksburg. In 1803, he moved to
Richmond and set up a bookstore there. On May 9, 1804, he bought the Republican newspaper the
Richmond Enquirer from the Jones family with its current mechanical department head W. W. Worsley. On July 30, 1805, he became sole editor and owner and he 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. At one point, he served on Richmond's city council. He was editor of the
Richmond Compiler paper from 1816 to 1833 and
The Crisis papers. 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, 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. On March 2, 1843, Ritchie brought his sons William F. and Thomas into management of the
Enquirer under the firm Thomas Ritchie & Sons. In 1845, he gave full control of the paper to his sons. In the
1844 US presidential election, Ritchie supported
James K. Polk because of Polk's support for 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. ==Personal life==