1820, March 7: In response to Monroe’s support of the Missouri Compromise, according to Ammon in “The Richmond Junto”: “The depressed mood of the Old Dominion was aptly summarized in an editorial in which Ritchie, deeply moved by the occasion, rose above the usual flaccid newspaper rhetoric of the day:”

We scarcely ever recollected to have tasted a bitterer cup. . . . A constitution warped from its legitimate bearings, an immense region of territory closed forever against the Southern and Western people- such is the ‘sorry sight’ which rises to our view….

But the deed is done – the treaty is signed, sealed and delivered. The compromise which threw this city and commonwealth into a flame and suspended for a week the Electoral Caucus is consummated. We submit. It is the duty of good citizens to hold by the sheet anchor, the law of the land, so long as it remains a law. We bow to it, though on no occasion with so poor a grace and so bitter a spirit. The South and West are wronged, they must be patient. The Union is too dear to us all to be torn asunder. . . . Some indeed thought  fit to augur the dissolution of the Union … but in truth, the present question never seriously jeopardized it , whatevermight have been the panic which was got up for the occasion. We take leave of this question with the bitterest disappointment.

But Spencer Roane mostly stayed out of that fray, and ended up pushing for Virginia to continue supporting Monroe as their presidential candidate that year, calming the anger of those so bitter.