160 Years of the American Idea

In May 1857, a coterie of literary New Englanders met for the first time to lay out the foundational vision for The Atlantic: a magazine adamantly opposed to slavery, belonging to “no party or clique,” which would work to publish literary articles “of an abstract and permanent value.” Six months later, in November 1857, the first issue of the magazine was printed. The Atlantic has spent the last year celebrating 160 years of the “American idea,” a principle to which it has been committed since its founding.

To reflect on more than a century and a half of continuous publication, we began one article every weekday that represented a year from’s history, beginning on November 1, 2017, with Edmund Quincy’s “,” a searing indictment of slavery in the U.S., and ending on June 26, 2018, with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “,” an examination of the impact of the nation’s first African American president.