Founding and journalistic roots The Nation was established on July 6, 1865, at 130 Nassau Street ("
Newspaper Row") in
Manhattan. Its founding coincided with the closure of the abolitionist newspaper
The Liberator, also in 1865, after slavery was abolished by the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; a group of abolitionists, led by the landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted, desired to found a new weekly political magazine.
Edwin Lawrence Godkin, who had been considering starting such a magazine for some time, agreed and so became the first editor of
The Nation.
Wendell Phillips Garrison, son of
The Liberators editor/publisher
William Lloyd Garrison, was Literary Editor from 1865 to 1906. Its founding publisher was Joseph H. Richards; the editor was Godkin, an
immigrant from Ireland who had formerly worked as a correspondent of the London
Daily News and
The New York Times. Godkin sought to establish what one sympathetic commentator later characterized as "an organ of opinion characterized in its utterance by breadth and deliberation, an organ which should identify itself with causes, and which should give its support to parties primarily as representative of these causes." In its "founding prospectus" the magazine wrote that the publication would have "seven main objects" with the first being "discussion of the topics of the day, and, above all, of legal, economical, and constitutional questions, with greater accuracy and moderation than are now to be found in the daily press."
The Nation pledged to "not be the organ of any party, sect or body" but rather to "make an earnest effort to bring to 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." dispatches from a
tour of the war-torn region by John Richard Dennett, a recent
Harvard graduate and a veteran of the
Port Royal Experiment. Dennett interviewed
Confederate veterans, freed slaves, agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau, and ordinary people he met by the side of the road. Among the causes supported by the publication in its earliest days was civil service reform—moving the basis of government employment from a
political patronage system to a professional
bureaucracy based upon
meritocracy.
The Nation also was preoccupied with the reestablishment of a sound national currency in the years after the
American Civil War, arguing that a stable
currency was necessary to restore the economic stability of the nation. Closely related to this was the publication's advocacy of the elimination of
protective tariffs in favor of lower prices of consumer goods associated with a
free trade system. The magazine would stay at
Newspaper Row for 90 years.
From 1880s literary supplement to 1930s New Deal booster In 1881, newspaperman-turned-railroad-baron
Henry Villard acquired
The Nation and converted it into a weekly literary supplement for his daily newspaper the
New York Evening Post. The offices of the magazine were moved to the
Evening Posts headquarters at 210 Broadway.
The New York Evening Post would later morph into a
tabloid, the
New York Post, a left-leaning afternoon tabloid, under owner
Dorothy Schiff from 1939 to 1976. Since then, it has been a
conservative tabloid owned by
Rupert Murdoch, while
The Nation became known for its left-wing ideology. In 1900, Henry Villard's son,
Oswald Garrison Villard, inherited the magazine and the
Evening Post, and sold off the latter in 1918. Thereafter, he remade
The Nation into a
current affairs publication and gave it an anti-
classical liberal orientation. As the 1932 U.S. presidential election approached, the Nation saw no real choice between Hoover and Roosevelt, and it urged readers to vote for Socialist Party candidate
Norman Thomas. Oswald Villard wrote "So I insist, the man who votes for either Hoover or Roosevelt is the one who is throwing away his vote... He is again postponing the peaceful revolution which Woodrow Wilson said in 1912 was on the horizon." The magazine did, however, endorse Roosevelt in the next three elections. Oswald Villard welcomed the
New Deal and supported the
nationalization of industries—thus reversing the meaning of "
liberalism" as the founders of
The Nation would have understood the term, from a belief in a smaller and more restricted government to a belief in a larger and less restricted government. Villard sold the magazine in 1935.
Maurice Wertheim, the new owner, sold it in 1937 to
Freda Kirchwey, who served as editor from 1933 to 1955. Almost every editor of
The Nation from Villard's time to the 1970s was looked at for "subversive" activities and ties. When
Albert Jay Nock published a column criticizing
Samuel Gompers and trade unions for being complicit in the war machine of the
First World War,
The Nation was briefly suspended from the US mail.
World War II and early Cold War The magazine's financial problems in the early 1940s prompted Kirchwey to sell her individual ownership of the magazine in 1943, creating a
nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, out of the money generated from a recruiting drive of sponsors. This organization was also responsible for academic affairs, including conducting research and organizing conferences, that had been a part of the early history of the magazine. Nation Associates became responsible for the operation and publication of the magazine on a nonprofit basis, with Kirchwey as both president of Nation Associates and editor of
The Nation. Before the
attack on Pearl Harbor,
The Nation repeatedly called on the United States to enter World War II to resist
fascism, and after the US entered the war, the publication supported the American war effort. Furthermore, unlike other leftist publications and organizations which followed a close Stalinist line in keeping with the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
The Nation supported American intervention in the war before
Operation Barbarossa. It also supported the use of the
atomic bomb on
Hiroshima. In the 1950s,
The Nation was attacked as "pro-communist" because of its advocacy of
détente with the
expansionist Soviet Union of
Joseph Stalin, and its criticism of
McCarthyism. Despite this,
Diana Trilling pointed out that Kirchwey did allow anti-Soviet writers, such as herself, to contribute material critical of Russia to the magazine's arts section. During McCarthyism (the Second Red Scare),
The Nation was banned from several school libraries in New York City and Newark, and a
Bartlesville, Oklahoma, librarian,
Ruth Brown, was fired from her job in 1950, after a citizens committee complained she had given shelf space to
The Nation.
James J. Storrow Jr. bought the magazine from Kirstein in 1965. During the 1950s,
Paul Blanshard, a former associate editor, served as
The Nations special correspondent in
Uzbekistan. His most famous writing was a series of articles attacking the
Catholic Church in America as a dangerous, powerful, and undemocratic institution.
1970s to 2024 On the eve of the 1968 U.S. presidential election the magazine argued that the choice between Nixon and Humphrey was such a bad one that voters should stay home. In June 1979,
The Nations publisher
Hamilton Fish and then-editor
Victor Navasky moved the magazine to 72
Fifth Avenue, in
Manhattan. In June 1998, the periodical had to move to make way for
condominium development. The offices of
The Nation are now at 33 Irving Place, in Manhattan's
Gramercy Park neighborhood. In 1977, a group organized by
Hamilton Fish V bought the magazine from the Storrow family. In 1985, he sold it to
Arthur L. Carter, who had made a fortune as a founding partner of
Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill. In 1991,
The Nation sued the
Department of Defense for restricting free speech by limiting
Gulf War coverage to
press pools. However, the issue was found
moot in
Nation Magazine v. United States Department of Defense, because the war ended before the case was heard. In 1995, Victor Navasky bought the magazine and, in 1996, became publisher. In 1995,
Katrina vanden Heuvel succeeded Navasky as editor of
The Nation, and in 2005, as publisher. In 2015,
The Nation celebrated its 150th anniversary with a documentary film by Academy Award–winning director
Barbara Kopple; a 268-page special issue featuring pieces of art and writing from the archives, and new essays by frequent contributors like
Eric Foner,
Noam Chomsky,
E. L. Doctorow,
Toni Morrison,
Rebecca Solnit, and
Vivian Gornick; a book-length history of the magazine by
D. D. Guttenplan (which
The Times Literary Supplement called "an affectionate and celebratory affair"); events across the country; and a relaunched website. In a tribute to
The Nation, published in the anniversary issue, President
Barack Obama said: In an era of instant, 140-character news cycles and reflexive toeing of the party line, it's incredible to think of the 150-year history of
The Nation. It's more than a magazine—it's a crucible of ideas forged in the time of Emancipation, tempered through depression and war and the civil-rights movement, and honed as sharp and relevant as ever in an age of breathtaking technological and economic change. Through it all,
The Nation has exhibited that great American tradition of expanding our moral imaginations, stoking vigorous dissent, and simply taking the time to think through our country's challenges anew. If I agreed with everything written in any given issue of the magazine, it would only mean that you are not doing your jobs. But whether it is your commitment to a fair shot for working Americans, or equality for all Americans, it is heartening to know that an American institution dedicated to provocative, reasoned debate and reflection in pursuit of those ideals can continue to thrive. On January 14, 2016,
The Nation endorsed
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for
President. In their reasoning, the editors of
The Nation professed that "Bernie Sanders and his supporters are bending the arc of history toward justice. Theirs is an insurgency, a possibility, and a dream that we proudly endorse." On June 15, 2019, Heuvel stepped down as editor;
D. D. Guttenplan, the editor-at-large, took her place. On March 2, 2020,
The Nation again endorsed Vermont
Senator Bernie Sanders for
President. In their reasoning, the editors of
The Nation professed: "As we find ourselves on a hinge of history—a generation summoned to the task of redeeming our democracy and restoring our republic—no one ever has to wonder what Bernie Sanders stands for." On February 23, 2022,
The Nation named
Jacobin founder
Bhaskar Sunkara its new president. In December 2023, Sunkara announced the magazine would be switching from a biweekly format to a larger monthly publication. On September 23, 2024,
The Nation endorsed
Kamala Harris for the
2024 United States presidential election but with criticism on foreign politics, especially in regard to the
Gaza war. On October 25, 2024, the magazine published an article, by the magazine's interns, criticizing this endorsement. Following
Donald Trump's victory in the election,
The Nation ran an opinion piece attributing the result to widespread support for "anti-system politics" among American society, drawing parallels between Harris' campaign and that of
Hillary Clinton in
2016. ==Finances==