Edwin Lawrence Godkin
| Edwin Lawrence Godkin | |
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| Born |
October 2, 1831 County Wicklow, Ireland |
| Died | May 21, 1902 (aged 70) Devon, England |
| Occupation | Journalist, editor |
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Edwin Lawrence Godkin (October 2, 1831 – May 21, 1902) was an Irish-born American journalist and newspaper editor. He founded The Nation, and was editor-in-chief of the New York Evening Post 1883-1899.
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. After leaving Belfast in 1851 and studying law in London, he was the 1853-1855 Crimean War correspondent for the London Daily News in Turkey and Russia, being 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 was admitted to the bar in 1859. Owing to impaired health, he travelled in Europe in 1860-1862. He wrote for the News and the New York Times in 1862-1865. In 1865, Godkin was asked by a group of abolitionists led by the architect Frederic Law Olmstead 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 the year 1899. In 1881 he sold the Nation to the New York Evening Post, and became an associate editor of the Post, of which he was editor-in-chief in 1883-1899, succeeding Carl Schurz. Under Godkin's tenure, The Nation supported free trade and was anti-imperialist, but opposed socialism and granting American women suffrage.
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