The Early Days Of The Nation Magazine

WHY LIBERALISM IS BANKRUPT SERIES—

By Louis Proyect Nov. 17, 2008  [print_link]

The Nation’s tepid brand of abolitionism in the 1860s.

Matthew Josephson, author of the muckraking classic “The Robber Barons”:

The Nation should lynch me.” Ironically, it was lynching in the South and other assaults against blacks that Godkin grew inured to. Just as President Andrew Johnson began to sabotage efforts at Reconstruction in the South against the objections of Radical Republicans and open the door to KKK lynch mobs, Godkin rushed to defend Johnson. When attempts to oust the racist President Johnson failed, Godkin pronounced this as a vindication of the law.

As I tried to explain in a Swans article on Jesse James, the racist attacks on Reconstruction first appeared in the state of Missouri under the auspices of the Liberal Republican Party. While the party only lasted for a brief time in the 1870s, it had a major impact on American history by coalescing racist opposition to black rights. Among the early supporters of the Liberal Republicans was E.L. Godkin of The Nation magazine, who agreed strongly with their desire for rapprochement with the South as well as their free trade policies that jibed with his Manchester school liberalism. Godkin subsequently broke with the liberals, but not over any principles. He simply preferred Charles Francis Adams as a presidential candidate to Horace Greeley.

literary editor, set up a meeting between Villard and an Englishman named William Lawson, who was seeking an agent for some very large stock transactions. With the Gilded Age in full swing, Villard’s relationship with Lawson “brought him experience in stock brokerage, some tidy profits, and growing insight into the upper reaches of high finance.” So writes his granddaughter Alexandra Villard Borchgrave, the wife of ultrarightist journalist Arnaud Borchgrave, in her biography of Henry Villard. She adds:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Unrepentant Marxist. 

Alexandra Villard Borchgrave, Villard: The Life And Times Of An American Titan, Doubleday, 2001.