The editorial board of The Atlantic has endorsed Hillary Clinton, weighing in on a presidential race for the first time in half a century and for only the third time in its almost 160 years of publication.

In an editorial entitled " Against Donald Trump ," the editors reached back to the mantra of the magazine's founders – to be "an organ of no party or clique" – to explain why the extraordinary choice posed to voters in the current election is dire enough for them to make an exception to their preferred neutrality.

The other two candidates whom The Atlantic has endorsed? Abraham Lincoln in 1860, when the United States faced the fracturing of the Civil War, and Lyndon Johnson, whose opponent in 1964 was the main reason behind the editorial board's decision to speak out that year.

"The Atlantic's endorsement of Johnson was focused less on his positive attributes than on the flaws of his opponent, Barry Goldwater, the junior senator from Arizona," they wrote in the column, published online Wednesday.

"Today, our position is similar to the one in which The Atlantic's editors found themselves in 1964," they continued. "We are impressed by many of the qualities of the Democratic Party's nominee for president, even as we are exasperated by others, but we are mainly concerned with the Republican Party's nominee, Donald J. Trump, who might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.

Clinton's attributes, summed up in one paragraph, are lauded as extensive and have "more than earned [her] the right to be taken seriously as a White House candidate."

"She has flaws (some legitimately troubling, some exaggerated by her opponents), but she is among the most prepared candidates ever to seek the presidency," they wrote. "We are confident that she understands the role of the United States in the world; we have no doubt she will apply herself assiduously to the problems confronting this country; and she has demonstrated an aptitude for analysis and hard work."

The rest of the column is devoted to describing Trump as superlatively unsuited to lead the country.

Calling Trump a "huckster" who "traffics in conspiracy theories," "appallingly sexist … erratic, secretive, and xenophobic," "easily goaded," an "enemy of fact-based discourse" and "ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution," the editorial board said Trump disqualified himself more than five years ago by standing at the head of the birther movement, accusing President Barack Obama of being a foreign citizen.

"Our endorsement of Clinton, and rejection of Trump, is not a blanket dismissal of the many Trump supporters who are motivated by legitimate anxieties about their future and their place in the American economy," they wrote. "But Trump has seized on these anxieties and inflamed and racialized them, without proposing realistic policies to address them."

"He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters – the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box – should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent," they concluded.

Editor Scott Stossel further elaborated on the unusual decision in a statement released to the press.