Background
John Reuben Thompson was born in Richmond, Virginia, on 23 October 1823. He was the son of John Thompson of New Hampshire and Sarah Dyckman Thompson of New York.
Charlottesville, VA, United States
John Reuben Thompson was a student at the University of Virginia from 1840 to 1842, read law in the office of James A. Seddon, and returned to the law class of the university, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1845.
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1850
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1856
John Reuben Thompson was born in Richmond, Virginia, on 23 October 1823. He was the son of John Thompson of New Hampshire and Sarah Dyckman Thompson of New York.
John Reuben Thompson attended schools in Richmond and in Easthaven, Connecticut. He was a student at the University of Virginia from 1840 to 1842, read law in the office of James A. Seddon, and returned to the law class of the university, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1845.
For two years John Thompson practiced law in Richmond. His father, then a prosperous merchant, purchased for him "The Southern Literary Messenger," the editorship of which Poe had surrendered just ten years before. Thompson was the owner and editor from 1847 to 1853 when he disposed of the ownership to his printers and continued as editor until he was succeeded in 1860 by George W. Bagby. The period of Thompson's editorship was that of the magazine's greatest influence and reputation. The acknowledged representative of the South, it printed especially the work of its leading writers.
In 1854, with John Esten Cooke acting for him on the Messenger, Thompson sailed for his first visit to Europe. His travel sketches were printed in 1856 by Derby & Jackson, with the title, Across the Atlantic, but the whole edition was destroyed in a New York fire, except for one volume, now at his own university. Thompson left the Messenger in 1860 to become - for only a few months - editor of a weekly publication of Augusta, Georgia, the Southern Field and Fireside. When Virginia seceded, his pen became one of the readiest in the Confederacy. In addition to his duties as assistant secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia, he helped edit, while they were printed, the Richmond Record and The Southern Illustrated News, and he contributed to the Index, spokesman of the Confederacy in England.
When his health failed, he resigned from his office and in July 1864 ran the blockade to England, where he was the chief writer on the Index until the fall of the Confederacy. In England, his influence was especially favorable to the South because of his wide friendship among celebrated writers. He had known Bulwer-Lytton, Thackeray and the Brownings on his earlier visit to Europe and among the many friends of the later period were Tennyson and Carlyle. After the defeat of the South, he maintained himself for a time in England by newspaper work and by preparing for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine from the notebooks of Major Heros von Borcke the "Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence."
In September 1866 he returned to America. He was an American correspondent for the London Standard and lectured, besides writing for other papers. In April 1867 he left Virginia for New York and, after one or two temporary engagements, was appointed by William Cullen Bryant to the literary editorship of the New York Evening Post. He held that position until the development of tuberculosis forced him to seek rest in Colorado in 1873. He died in New York and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
Thompson supported the Confederacy by writing articles in English magazines. He was a secessionist.