Washington Republic

City: Washington

State: District of Columbia

The Washington Republic was a newspaper established to be the official organ of President Zachary Taylor. After winning the presidential election of 1848, Taylor began cultivating plans to replace the National Intelligencer, the administration paper for previous Whig presidents, with a new paper. The Republic began operations in June 1849 with Albert T. Burnley as publisher and Alexander C. Bullitt and John O. Sargent as editors. Although the Republic's editors supported the administration, disagreements over the distribution of patronage, Bullitt's attacks on Taylor's cabinet, and the paper's support of Henry Clay's omnibus bill for resolving the territorial and sectional issues rising from the Mexican cessation limited its effectiveness as an administration mouthpiece. After Taylor's death and the elevation of Millard Fillmore to the presidency, the National Intelligencer again became the administration newspaper.

K. Jack Bauer, Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 266-67; Elbert B. Smith, The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 57-58; Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 406, 415, 501-2; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States, From 1690 to 1872 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 256-57.