Edwin Lawrence Godkin

Edwin Lawrence Godkin (2 October 1831 – 21 May 1902) was an American journalist. He founded The Nation and was the editor-in-chief of the New York Evening Post from 1883 to 1899.

Early life

Godkin was born in Moyne (a hamlet in Knockananna), County Wicklow, Ireland. His father, James Godkin, was a Congregationalist minister and a journalist. He studied law at Queen's College, Belfast, where he was the first president of the Literary and Scientific Society.

Journalist

After leaving Belfast in 1851 and studying law in London, he was the Crimean War correspondent for the London Daily News in Turkey and Russia and was present at the Siege of Sevastopol.

In 1856, he emigrated to the United States and wrote letters to the News, giving his impressions of a tour on horseback he made of the southern states of the American Union. He studied law under David Dudley Field in New York City, and he was admitted to the bar in 1859. Because of his impaired health, he travelled in Europe in 1860 to 1862. He wrote for the News and The New York Times in 1862 to 1865.

In 1865, Godkin was asked by a group of abolitionists, led by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to found a new weekly political magazine. Godkin, who had been considering starting such a magazine for some time, agreed and became the first editor of The Nation when it began publishing in New York City in 1865.

Charles Eliot Norton gained supporters for the magazine in Boston, and James Miller McKim in Philadelphia. In 1866, two others joined Godkin as proprietors while he remained editor until the end of 1899. In 1881, he sold The Nation to the New York Evening Post, and he became an associate editor of the Post and then editor-in-chief in 1883 to 1899, succeeding Carl Schurz. Under Godkin's tenure, The Nation supported free trade and was anti-imperialist. It opposed socialism and women's suffrage.