Thomas Ritchie, then seventy years of age, and one of the most influential political editors of the day. During this administration the dailies dropped to two, the Intelligencer and the Union.
On August 8, 1846, a law was enacted that, instead of each house selecting its own printer, the contract should go to the lowest bidder. In the meantime, Blair and Rives had more firmly established the Congressional Globe, in which the debates in Congress appear verbatim, so that the Globe became the recognized official reporter of Congress, a position it continued to hold until the work was taken over by the Congressional Record.
It was said of President Taylor that, although overruled in the selection of his official advisors, he was allowed to have his own way in the choice of a newspaper organ. As the National Intelligencer, under Gales and Seaton, had been very friendly to Daniel Webster and had denounced Taylor's nomination as "one not fit to be made," the President sought his editorial advisors in other quarters. Alexander Bullitt and John O. Sergeant, one from New Orleans and the other from New York, were brought to Washington to become editors of the Republic, the new official paper.
This organ had but little weight, and, when Fillmore succeeded to office and Webster became the head of his cabinet, the Massachusetts statesman saw to it that his favorites were immediately restored to favor. The Intelligencer was once more the official mouthpiece of the Whigs.[1]
But the selection was no longer a matter of national importance. It had degenerated into a mere designation of so much patronage.
It was Jackson's use of patronage that had lessened the
- ↑ R. R. Wilson, Washington, the Capital City, ii, 70.
