From the Raleigh News and Observer shortly after the war:
"It is profitless to discuss how far any measure of the Confederate government was right or wrong, but as for Mr. Davis, he had the responsibility; he had full knowledge of all the circumstances; he had the general plan of the whole war from Texas to the Potomac to subserve and watch and to carry out. It is to our glory that there was no Fort Lafayette at the South. It is to the honor of the Confederate government that no Confederate secretary ever could touch a bell and send a citizen to prison."
Actually they could, and they did. The first person locked up for political purposes was a Pensacola newspaper reporter who printed something Braxton Bragg didn't like on the day after Sumter was fired on. Bragg threw him in prison.