And it's good to have the balance provided when you point out that unionists were not always saints either, whether it be Maine or Tennessee. But I do still believe that the violence was more systematic in the Confederacy. A mob explodes and diminishes with merciful rapidity. The heavy-handed rebel rule kept on holding the population, slave and free, under its thumb. Lincoln, the great centralizer, took actions to negate the anti-press actions of subordinates like Burnside,while that champion of localism. Jeff Davis, was quite content to allow local leaders full use of the big stick of government.
I've been meaning to tabulate the actions of Lincoln’s government against newspapers, editors, writers, and publishers, but I haven't gotten around to it. By this I mean suppressions and arrests by the federal government rather than destruction or intimidation by mobs, which are interesting enough on their own. It wasn't just Maine where mob action took place. Heaven knows there were many, many mob actions all over the North like the one I posted above. This tabulation that I'll do some day is a huge task, and I just haven't had the time to do it.
Some books on the subject might be of interest to others here. A book that documents a large number of mob and government interferences with the press is Lincoln and the Press by Robert S Harper, published by McGraw-Hill in 1951, but it's out of print. Appleton's American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year ____ lists some of the suppressions, etc. but is not complete [Example of Appleton's from 1864; see pages 393 and 394]. The war year issues of Appleton's have been out of print since shortly after the war. More modern books include Lincoln's Wrath, Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a Presidents Mission to Destroy the Press by Manber and Dahlstrom and Blue and Gray in Black and White, Newspapers in the Civil War by Brayton Harris.
With respect to Lincoln and Burnside, I assume that you are talking about Burnside’s seizure of the Chicago Times in direct violation of a federal court order. A crowd of 20,000 Chicagoans gathered to protest Burnside’s action, and the Illinois legislature denounced the general. I wonder whether this strong protest by Illinois citizens and politicians and the illegal nature of Burnside’s action were what led Lincoln to rescind that particular seizure. [Link].
Did Lincoln rescind any of the numerous other press suppressions by the federal government? I'm aware that Burnside rescinded his suppression order against the New York World at the same time as he rescinded that for the Chicago Times, i.e., after Lincoln objected to Burnside's order that suppressed both papers.