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,^[6] 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] Wendell Phillips Garrison, son of The Liberator's 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.^[8][9] 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]

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."^[11] 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."^[11]

In the first year of publication, one of the magazine's regular features was The South as It Is,^[12] 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.^[10] 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.^[13] 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.^[14]

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 Post's 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.^[15]

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.^[16]

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.^[17][18] 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.^[19] 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.^[20]

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.^[21]

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.^[22] It also supported the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.^[22]

During the late 1940s and again in the early 1950s, a merger was discussed by Kirchwey (later Carey McWilliams) and The New Republic's Michael Straight. The two magazines were very similar at that time—both were left of center, The Nation further left than TNR; both had circulations around 100,000, although TNR's was slightly higher; and both lost money. It was thought that the two magazines could unite and make the most powerful journal of opinion. The new publication would have been called The Nation and New Republic. Kirchwey was the most hesitant, and both attempts to merge failed. The two magazines would later take very different paths: The Nation achieved a higher circulation, and The New Republic moved more to the right.^[23]

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.^[9] One of the magazine's writers, Louis Fischer, resigned from the magazine afterwards, claiming The Nation's foreign coverage was too pro-Soviet.^[24] 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.^[25]

During McCarthyism (the Second Red Scare), The Nation was banned from several school libraries in New York City and Newark,^[26] 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.^[26]

In 1955, George C. Kirstein replaced Kirchway as magazine owner.^[27] James J. Storrow Jr. bought the magazine from Kirstein in 1965.^[28]

During the 1950s, Paul Blanshard, a former associate editor, served as The Nation's 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.^[29]

In June 1979, The Nation's 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.^[30] 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^[31] 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."^[32]

On June 15, 2019, Heuvel stepped down as editor; D. D. Guttenplan, the editor-at-large, took her place.^[33]

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."^[4]

On February 23, 2022, The Nation named Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara its new president.^[34] In December 2023, Sunkara announced the magazine would be switching from a biweekly format to a larger monthly publication.^[35]

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 2023 Gaza war.^[36] On October 25, 2024, the magazine published an article, by the magazine's interns, criticizing this endorsement. ^[37] 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.^[38]