National Intelligencer

National Intelligencer

National Intelligencer plaque at original location in Washington, DC
Owner(s)	Samuel Harrison Smith
Publisher	William Winston Seaton and Joseph Gales
Ceased publication	1870
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.

The National Intelligencer newspaper was published in Washington, D.C. from about 1800 until 1870.

The publication was founded under the named National intelligencer, and Washington advertiser. Its name changed to the National Intelligencer starting with the issue of November 27, 1810. The newspaper was published daily from 1813 to 1867 as the Daily National Intelligencer and was the dominant newspaper of the capital.

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.