The Nation

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,^[8] 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.^[7]

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.^[10][11] 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".^{[10][10]: 503}

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".^[12]

In the first year of publication, one of the magazine's regular features was The South as It Is.^[13] The magazine published eyewitness accounts of the Reconstruction era of southern states.^[14]

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.^[10]: 503 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.^{[10][10]: 503–504} 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.^[10]: 504

From 1880s literary supplement to 1930s New Deal booster

In June 1881, The Nation was acquired by journalist Henry Villard.^[15] Afterwards, the magazine was printed in conjunction with New York Evening Post (now New York Post), which at the time held liberal views.^[16]

After Henry Villard died, the publications were inherited by his son; Oswald Garrison Villard.^[17] Villard's ideology and the editorial stance of The Nation shared many similarities; both were advocating for racial equality and isolationism.^[16] In July 1918, Villard announced that The Nation will be separate from the newspaper and stop reprinting articles of the New York Evening Post. Villard made this decision because he believed that reprinting practice gave readers the impression that The Nation was a weekly publication of the New York Evening Post.^[18]

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 of America 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.^[19]

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.^[20][21] Villard sold the magazine in 1935 to "The Nation Fund, Inc", a nonprofit corporation established by banker Maurice Wertheim.^[22] In 1937, Wertheim sold The Nation to editor Freda Kirchwey, who said she bought it because she intended to turn the magazine into a "voice of leftism".^[23]

Almost every editor of The Nation from Villard's time to the 1970s was looked at for "subversive" activities and ties.^[24] 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.^[25]

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.^[26]

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.^[27] It also supported the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.^[27]

In January 1942, The Holocaust committed by Nazi Germany received almost no attention from the global media. The Nation was one of the few publications that reported on the crimes committed against Jews during this period; it published multiple articles by Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein, who explained the events that took place in the concentration camps run by the Schutzstaffel. The Nation advocated for the United States to provide refuge to German Jewry.^[15]

Freda Kirchwey openly supported the idea of banning the fascist press, which earned her the enmity of liberals, including her long-time friend Norman Thomas who said: "In ten years or less it won't be the people you want to suppress now who will be suppressed and stay suppressed by your theory; it will be yourselves along with many others".^[15]

In the 1950s, The Nation was attacked by critics as "pro-communist" because of its advocacy of détente with the expansionist Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, and its criticism of McCarthyism.^[11] One of the magazine's writers, Louis Fischer, resigned from the magazine afterwards, claiming The Nation's foreign coverage was too pro-Soviet.^[28] 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.^[29]

During McCarthyism (the Second Red Scare), The Nation was banned from several school libraries in New York City and Newark,^[30] 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.^[30] In 1957, Fidel Castro wrote an article for The Nation, titled; "What Cuba's Rebels Want". A year later, the magazine published an article discussing the possibility of US invading Cuba; it predicted the Bay of Pigs invasion.^[14]

In 1955, George Kirstein replaced Freda Kirchway as magazine owner.^[31] James J. Storrow Jr. bought the magazine from Kirstein in 1965.^[32]

1970s to 2023

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.^[33] In June 1979, The Nation's publisher Hamilton Fish moved the magazine to 72 Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan.^[4] The Nation's current address is 33 Irving Place in New York.^[34]

In 1977, a group organized by Hamilton Fish V bought the magazine from the Storrow family.^[35] In 1985, the magazine was sold to for undiscosed amount to "The Nation Co", headed by millionaire Arthur Carter and two former owners of The Nation.^[36]

In March 1991, The Nation together with Center for Constitutional Rights sued Department of Defense for allegedly violating First Amendment and Fifth Amendment for creating press pools during Gulf War. Judge Leonard B. Sand ruled the case moot.^[37] In 1995, veteran editor Victor Navasky and a group of investors that included Paul Newman acquired the magazine. Navasky became the magazine's publisher and editorial director.^[38] In 1995, Katrina vanden Heuvel succeeded Navasky as editor of The Nation.^[39] In 2005, she became the magazine's editor and publisher.^[40]

In 2015, The Nation celebrated its 150th anniversary with a documentary film by Academy Award–winning director Barbara Kopple, which analyzed the magazine's history.^[42] The Nation also held a celebration in St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, which was attended by Tony Kushner, Bill de Blasio, Walter Mosley and Michael Moore.^[43] To mark the anniversary, former US President Barack Obama wrote a letter praising The Nation but noting that he disagreed with some of the magazine's views.^[41] Editor of The Nation, D. D. Guttenplan wrote a biography of the magazine entitled The Nation: A Biography (The First 150 Years). History News Network said that the biography "has played, and continues to play, an important role in U.S. history, society, and politics".^[44]

In January 2016, The Nation endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for President for the third time in its history. The editorial board professed; "Voters can trust Sanders because he doesn't owe his political career to the financial overlords of the status quo. Freed from these chains of special interest, he can take the bold measures that the country needs".^[45] On June 15, 2019, Heuvel stepped down as editor; D. D. Guttenplan, the editor-at-large, took her place.^[46]

On February 23, 2022, The Nation named Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara its new president. In an interview, Sunkara said that he believes liberalism and socialism need to form a coalition to ensure progress and him becoming a president of The Nation was one way towards this goal.^[6] In December 2023, Sunkara announced the magazine would be switching from a biweekly format to a larger monthly publication.^[3]