Beginnings From its founding in 1848 until 1861
The Independent was edited by a team of three prominent Congregational ministers:
Joseph Parrish Thompson,
Richard Salter Storrs, and
Leonard Bacon. It was published and financed by a group of New York businessmen led by
Henry C. Bowen of the silk wholesaling firm Bowen & McNamee. The editorial policy was strongly antislavery, which hurt the magazine's circulation initially, but it improved through the 1850s to reach 35,000 by the beginning of the
American Civil War. In 1861
Harriet Beecher Stowe's brother
Henry Ward Beecher, who had been a regular contributor to the magazine, became its editor. His assistant editor was
Theodore Tilton, who succeeded Beecher as editor in 1863 and remained in the position until 1870. During Tilton's tenure,
The Independent took up the cause of women's suffrage. It also published poetry and literary contributions by authors including
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Emma Lazarus,
John Greenleaf Whittier,
James Russell Lowell and
Edward Eggleston, who was also briefly supervising editor, in 1871. It reached its highest circulation of 75,000 in 1870, the year in which Tilton retired as editor.), a strong proponent of the
League to Enforce Peace and later the
League of Nations. During the second decade of the twentieth century
The Independent absorbed three other magazines:
The Chautauquan (1914), ''
Harper's Weekly (1916), and Countryside'' (1917). A printers' strike in 1919 was damaging to the magazine, which struggled with rising costs and changed hands several times during the 1920s. In 1924 its last owners moved it to Boston but it remained unsuccessful. In 1928
The Independent was merged with
The Outlook to form
The Outlook and Independent. ==Footnotes==