The New Creed of the Nation: Charles Eliot Norton, E. L. Godkin, and the Meaning of Freedom in the Civil War Era

Abstract

This article describes the intellectual collaboration and friendship between Charles Eliot Norton and E. L. Godkin as they established one of the most influential American journals of the late nineteenth century,The Nation. Their friendship provides a fascinating case study of an important strain of American political thought at the pivotal moment in its transition from the antebellum to the postbellum eras. In their different ways, Norton and Godkin struggled to reconcile the communal ideal of enlightened self-government with the ideal of liberal individualism, and, at the same time, the promise of egalitarian democracy with the realities of state power and machine politics. No sudden reversal or abrupt change of principle marked their political outlook. Instead there was a gradual loss of confidence in the powerful vision that brought all their contradictory commitments brilliantly together, and made it seem as though all that was best in the old order might be retained undiminished in the new.