The Nation

America's oldest continuously published weekly magazine, The Nation has maintained a consistent liberal/radical outlook since its founding, in 1865, by a group of abolitionists just at the end of the Civil War. Among the causes advocated by the magazine over the years have been labor unionism in the late 1800s, the formation of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in the early 1900s, the Sacco and Vanzetti case in the 1920s, anti-McCarthyism in the 1950s, the civil-rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, and countering Reaganomics in the 1980s. Its contributing writers over the years have included many of the nation's most prominent figures in politics, the arts, education, and literature, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, H. L. Mencken, Willa Cather, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Baldwin, Jean-Paul Sartre, Cesar Chavez, Ralph Nader, E. L. Doctorow, and Toni Morrison. By the end of the twentieth century, columnists such as Alexander Cockburn, Katha Pollitt, Christopher Hitchens, and Calvin Trillin were offering readers commentary on public policy and cultural issues. Since 1966, the periodical has sponsored The Nation Institute, an independently funded public charity "committed to the creation of a just society and an informed public, as well as to the preservation of rights protected under the First Amendment." Some historians have credited The Nation with keeping alive the tradition of muckraking and advocacy journalism in the United States.

According to The Nation's original prospectus, in 1865 the publication was defined as strictly independent and not "the organ of any party, sect or body." Hoping that their organ could help heal the rifts of the bloody Civil War that had just ended, the founders of the weekly periodical—among its early backers were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, William James and his brother Henry James, Henry Adams, and William Dean Howells—further declared that its purpose would be to "make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred…." Its first editor, the Anglo-Irish journalist E. L. Godkin, raised $100,000 to launch the magazine, which published its first issue on July 6, 1865, just weeks after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

Radical abolitionists dominated The Nation's earliest issues. Its major financial backer, George Luther Stearns, was a Boston lead-pipe manufacturer who had supplied John Brown with the munitions for the raid at Harper's Ferry in 1859. The first literary editor was Wendell Phillips Garrison, the son of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Still, although The Nation supported most of the Reconstruction program and civil rights legislation, its middle-of-the-roadstance disappointed supporters who advocated more radical reforms. In the interests of stabilizing the publication, Godkin distanced himself from what he called "too close identification with a factional or partisan cause." On labor-versus-capital issues, The Nation adopted a generally "liberal capitalist" stance, criticizing the excesses of business and supporting unions while steering clear of more ideological socialist solutions. When investors threatened to withdraw support, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted helped reorganize the periodical to guarantee its editorial independence.

In 1881, when The Nation became an insert in Henry Villard's New York Evening Post, Godkin turned over the editorship to Wendell Phillips Garrison. Circulation shrank, and the publication became little more than a book review section for the newspaper. After Garrison retired, several editors followed in quick succession: Hammond Lamont, who died within three years; Sanskrit scholar Paul Elmer More, who added more literary criticism to the publication; and Harold deWolf Fuller. Finally, in 1918, with World War I straining public discourse and threatening civil liberties, Oscar Garrison Villard, Henry's son, took over as editor and turned it into the more radical publication that it has since remained. Under his guidance, circulation increased fivefold in just two years: from 7,200 in 1918 to 38,000 in 1920. Oscar Garrison Villard had earlier helped found the NAACP, and was active in controversial causes, advocating clemency for conscientious objectors, opposing American colonial expansion as in the annexation of Hawaii and Panama, and backing self-determination for the Philippines and Ireland. The United States government seized the magazine's September 14, 1918 issue on the grounds that it was seditious. The Nation gave extensive coverage to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and was the first American publication to publish the new Soviet Constitution. During the 1920s, it helped galvanize public opinion in favor of a retrial for anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

With the resurgence of liberal ideology in the wake of the Great Depression, circulation of The Nation increased to 36,000 by the time Villard retired in 1932. He was succeeded by Freda Kirchwey, who remained editor until 1955. Villard continued writing for the publication until 1940, when he broke with Kirchwey in the Stalinist-versus-Trotskyist controversy that had seriously divided American leftists. By the late 1930s, after Kirchwey assumed ownership of the publication, The Nation was breaking new ground in American journalism by publishing more articles on the Spanish Civil War and on women's issues, birth control, and sexual freedom. During World War II, she staunchly opposed Nazism and Fascism in Europe. In the postwar period, the publication stood firmly against the witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy and advocated the peaceful use of atomic energy and the establishment of the state of Israel. Kirchwey angered many leftists, however, by refraining from endorsing the Progressive candidacy of Henry A. Wallace for president in 1948. Faced with financial difficulties, Kirchwey transferred ownership of the magazine in 1943 to The Nation Associates, a network of subscribers who were asked to enroll members. The publication seriously considered a merger with its amicable rival, The New Republic.

Carey McWilliams succeeded Kirchwey as editor in 1955 and, with George Kirstein as publisher, continued to question Cold War policies, the growth of the military-industrial complex, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) involvement in Guatemala, and the events that led to the Vietnam War. The Nation also broke new ground in consumer advocacy in the 1950s and 1960s, publishing the first serious article that linked cigarette smoking to cancer, as well as early articles by Ralph Nader on car safety. At the same time, The Nationtook a strong stance on behalf of desegregation and other aspects of the growing civil rights movement, and published with greater frequency the views of revisionist American historians such as Walter La Feber, Gabriel Kolko, Barton Bernstein, H. Stuart Hughes, Howard Zinn, and others. Kirstein helped stabilize the always precarious financial position of the publication before turning the reins over to James J. Storrow, Jr. in the mid-1960s, whose expertise in print technology further bolstered the periodical's fiscal viability.

McWilliams was briefly succeeded as editor in 1975 by Blair Clark, who had worked for CBS and The New York Post and who had earlier been campaign manager for Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign in 1968. Within two years, The Nation was purchased by a consortium organized by Hamilton Fish III, which selected Victor Navasky as editor. Under the new structure, the editor and publisher became general partners and the investors became limited partners with no editorial voice. Fish was succeeded as publisher by Arthur Carter. After 1994, Katrina Vanden Heuvel served as editor, with Navasky becoming publisher and editorial director. In reflecting on the history of the publication at its 125th anniversary in 1990, Navasky wrote: "A maverick magazine, it has attracted maverick proprietors, which may be one of its survival secrets." He added, "We will continue to fight for causes, lost and found … someone once described The Nation as a magazine for the permanent minority…. A magazine shouldn't come to power. It cannourish, it can prod, it can hector, it can educate, it can cajole, wheedle, expose, embarrass, inform, illuminate and inspire. And if it does all these things … the laws of capitalism notwithstanding, it will survive."

Alpern, Sara. Freda Kirchwey: A Woman of the Nation. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1987.

Armstrong, W., editor. The Gilded Age Letters of E. L. Godkin. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1974.

McWilliams, Carey. The Education of Carey McWilliams. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1979.

Tebbel, John. The American Magazine: A Compact History. New York, Hawthorn Books, 1969.

Vanden Heuvel, Katrina, editor. The Nation, 1865-1990: Selections from the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture. New York, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1990.