Michele Willens | The Nation

If California's historic 1950 Senate race had gone the other way there would have been no Checkers speech, no Watergate break-in, no Woodward and Bernstein, perhaps an early exit from Vietnam.

In the issue of January 4, 1866, The Nation--itself founded by a group of abolitionists--paid tribute to the final issue of William Lloyd Garrison's fiery anti-slavery newspaper, Th