Thornton Leigh Hunt 1860s. Hunt was also editor of "The Spectator" from around 1859 to January 1861. James Buchanan was at that time President of the United States and was attempting to counter civil war over the issue of slavery, mostly by adopting a vacillatory position. Two Americans based in London - a businessman called John McHenry and an Assistant Secretary to ambassador George M. Dallas, called Benjamin Moran - determined to use the magazine as a counter to the generally anti-Buchanan position of the British press. Hunt had assisted Robert Stephen Rintoul at "The Spectator" and appears to have stayed on after
Encounter (magazine) Encounter (magazine) Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and journalist Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991. Published in the United Kingdom, it was a largely Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal, originally associated with the anti-Stalinist left. The magazine received covert funding from the Central Intelligence Agency, after the CIA and MI6 discussed the founding of an "Anglo-American left-of-centre publication" intended to counter the idea of cold war neutralism. The magazine was rarely critical of American foreign policy, but beyond this editors had considerable publishing freedom. Spender served as literary editor until 1967,