What usurpations? Suspending habeas? Davis did that. Shutting down newspapers? The confederates locked up their first newspaper editor one day after Ft. Sumter was shelled. Davis unilaterally extended the enlistments of his soldiers, abrogating their contract. Under Davis, Confederate forces spread terror among Unionist areas of the south.
And unlike Davis, Lincoln actually ran for election, twice, against opposition. Davis ran unopposed and won 97% of the vote, a total that sounds rather like those out of Saddam-era Iraq or North Korea.
Not to mention the socialization of industry on a scale not again seen until FDR.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus numerous times without congressional authorization. As far as I know, Davis only suspended habeas corpus for those periods and in specific areas that his Congress had authorized him to suspend it.
Shutting down newspapers? The confederates locked up their first newspaper editor one day after Ft. Sumter was shelled.
Counting Southern newspaper suppressions is a losing tactic for Union supporters considering the huge number of newspaper suppressions/destructions in the North. I know of maybe five or six suppressions/destructions of newspapers by Southerners, most of which were by mobs and in some cases happened before the war.
Was the example you cite perchance a correspondent of the Pensacola Observer newspaper named Mathews who published when Confederate General Braxton Bragg was planning to attack Fort Pickens? The published information was then taken to the fort, allowing its commander to immediately request aid from the offshore Union fleet. The fleet quickly furnished 100 men and ammunition to the fort, and Bragg's planned attack was thwarted. Mathews was arrested -- I don't know what ultimately happened to him.
Under Davis, Confederate forces spread terror among Unionist areas of the south.
Two areas come to my mind: East Tennessee and parts of Texas. There may well be other areas. I don't think they were as significant in scale as what Lincoln and his forces did in Maryland and Missouri.
Re: East Tennessee. The East Tennesseans started destroying railroad bridges after the war started. That resulted in Confederate forces being deployed against them. To those on the receiving end of the Confederate reprisals, it may have seemed that the Confederates were spreading terror, and it is possible that they may have been. When the Union got in control of East Tennessee a couple of years later, the Unionist East Tennesseans did the same things back to the Confederate inhabitants of East Tennessee. That harassment continued after the war was over.
Re: Texas. In the case of Texas, two situations come to mind: the Great Hanging at Gainesville in 1862 (you mentioned that upthread) and the "massacre" of German unionists at the Nueces River in 1862.
Re: The Great Hanging at Gainesville: From the book, "Tainted Breeze, The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas 1862":
"...Young [the prosecutor in Gainesville] focused on ferreting out only the members who had planned a violent uprising. Young's queries as prosecuting attorney ... did reveal the outlines of a terrifying plot. Several admitted they intended to take possesion of North Texas using munitions from militia arsenals in Gainesville and Sherman...They had identified Confederate sympathizers and intended to murder them and their families..."
Some of the Unionists admitted to trying to contact the Union army and disaffected Indian tribes to coordinate an uprising. They reportedly managed to get some gunpowder from one of the Indian tribes. (These communications were a violation of the Confederate Articles of War, I believe, and punishable by death as specified in the Articles.)
One of the Unionists boasted to the public from the hanging tree of his comrades' plan to kill Confederate men, women, and children. I'm sure that inflamed the community. (One of the jurors had reported that there were 300-400 armed men in sight in Gainesville on Oct 1, the day of mass arrest, so there the makings of a mob were present.)
When alerted of possible lynch mob activities, the jury quickly tried and released over a dozen prisoners to keep them out of the lynch mob's reach.
From "Lone Star Blue and Gray" by Ralph A. Wooster: A Gainesville mob was responsible for about 25 hangings in response to stories of unionist plans to burn the homes of Confederate sympathizers and kill Confederate men, women, and children. This happened before the jury trial was arranged.
Re: the "massacre" of German Unionists on the Nueces River, 1862. The German unionists in Central Texas had formed three military companies favoring the Union. They abandoned the companies at the insistence of a Confederate officer, but about 65 of them left Central Texas for Mexico where they planned to take a boat to New Orleans to join the Union Army. The Confederates found out their plan and chased after them attacking the Germans at dawn (although some individual shots were fired killing pickets some minutes before it became light enough to attack). The battle took place about a day's ride from Mexico. The Confederates killed about 32 of the Germans and wounded many others. Two of the Texans were killed and 18 wounded.