Abe Lincoln and the media

[Ditto]

Lew Rockwell is not racist in the least, only right-wing, and highly conservative.

When did that change take place? The Rocksmellers always claimed to be the only authentic Libertarians while anyone who didn't buy their party line is a despot-in-waiting. Hell, they make that Justin Romano guy look sane.

[Ditto]

DISPROVE him. He provides well documented sources...

DiLorenzo? He spends all his time misquoting and distorting well documented sources knowing full well the "true believers" will never check. Go to the sources yourself and decide if you trust that clown.

It's kind of like the DiVinci Code... lots of references to make fiction look like reality.

[PeaRidge]

Lincoln's early efforts to stymie the American Press have been overlooked by many historians. He began in New York because the New York City newspapers had always dominated much of the nation’s news.

Although papers like Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune supported the war, others, such as the Journal of Commerce and the New York Daily News did not. These two papers were the opposition press in the North, and important because their articles were reprinted in many other papers that were also critical of Lincoln’s war policies.

"In May 1861 the Journal of Commerce had published a list of more than a hundred Northern newspapers that had editorialized against going to war. The Lincoln administration responded by ordering the Postmaster General to deny these papers mail delivery".

At that time, nearly all newspaper deliveries were made by mail, so this action put every one of the papers out of circulation.

"Some of them resumed publication after promising not to criticize the Lincoln government. For example, the founder of the Journal of Commerce, Gerard Hallock, ”brought the wrath of government down on his head” with his “peace editorials”--appeals not to treason or even secession, but to peace.

"Hallock had spent thirty years of his life building the paper to its position as one of the most prominent in America, and rather than see it become extinct, he obeyed the government’s demand that he sell his ownership in the paper and withdraw from its management. With the paper’s peace editorials censored, the paper was permitted to use the mails once again.

The same technique--denying the use of the mails--was used by the Lincoln administration against the New Your Daily News, The Daybook, Brooklyn Eagle, Freeman’s Journal, and several other smaller New York newspapers.

The editor of the Daily News was Ben Wood, the brother of New York City Mayor Fernando Wood, who had denounced Lincoln as an “unscrupulous Chief magistrate” whose recent message to Congress was “an ocean of falsehood and deceit.” After being denied the use of the mails, Wood hired private express couriers and delivery boys to deliver his papers. The administration responded by ordering Federal marshals to confiscate the paper in cites throughout the Northern states. The paper then went into bankruptcy.

"The Brooklyn Eagle promised not to write any more anti-Lincoln editorials and was therefore permitted to resume publication, but the Freeman’s Appeal was censored after Lincoln ordered the arrest of the editor, James McMasters, who was sent to Fort Lafayette.

By September of 1861, all of the opposition press in New York City was censored with the help of military force.

Fort Lafayette was filled with newspaper editors from all over the country who had questioned the wisdom of Lincoln’s military invasion and war of conquest. Seward and his Federal officers scoured the countryside for the editors of any newspapers, large and small that did not support the Lincoln administration’s war policy and had them arrested and imprisoned.

Although the military presence was pervasive in Northern cities in order to implement the Lincoln/Seward censorship policy, it looked the other way when mobs—at times mobs of Federal soldiers—ransacked the offices and destroyed the property of newspapers that were critical of Lincoln.

A mob of Federal soldiers demolished the offices of the Democratic Standard in Washington, DC, after it editorialized about military blunders during the Battle of First Manassas. This same thing happened to the Bangor Democrat when a Unionist mob completely destroyed the Maine paper’s printing facilities and demanded the hanging of the editor.

In many cases, these editors were simply editorializing in favor of avoiding the bloodshed of war, and working out some kind of peaceful solution to the crisis, including compensated emancipation.

Lincoln would have none of these suggestions, and so he allowed his military and his supporters to destroy paper after paper in the North.

The Northern peace movement was intimidated, physically assaulted, and destroyed.

To those that were keen observers of Lincoln, it became apparent that he had rebuffed the numerous peace efforts of key leaders in both the Southern Confederacy, as well as his own party and the concerned citizens of the North and West.

The deeper implications of Lincoln’s suppression of free speech were rarely noticed.

The need for widespread suppression suggested that Lincoln’s war was not part of the electoral majority mandate that he claimed to be vindicating by invading the South.

As time passed, eventually Lincoln wrote:

"You will take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce... and prohibit any further publication thereof... you are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison in any fort or military prison in your command, the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers... and you will hold the persons so arrested in close custody until they can be brought to trial before a military commission."

Order from Lincoln to General John A. Dix, May 18, 1864, on the establishment of his military dictatorship over the First Amendment.

[Non-Sequitur]

Post the link, I will try and find some for you.

Don't need to. Rustbucket posted it in reply 7.

[Non-Sequitur]

Or, as you so imply, the southerners were dirty SOB's that should have been exterminated?

On the contrary, you are the only one saying that it is perfectly acceptable to kill innocent civilians, so long as those civilians were Unionists.

[Non-Sequitur]

I take it that this is the sort of thing you are looking for..

Depends. Arrest him for what? Mere criticizm of the government should not be grounds for arrest and it wasn't, regardless of what you all would have us believe. And that is what you are all implying, that Lincoln shut down papers that disagreed with him. And there is little evidence to support such claims. But treason, sedition, printing military secrets, and financial fraud are all different matters, and areas where the publication of a newspaper may be suspended. Even you should be able to see that.

[stand watie]

it never fails to amaze how the DYs, REVISIONISTS & south/America-HATERS (usually the SAME people!) try to excuse & cover-up the CRIMINAL EXCESSES of "st.abe, the clay-footed idol of the DAMNyankeeland".

lincoln was about of the same sort as wee willie klintoon.

NEITHER POTUS was moral, decent or cared about anything except $$$$$$$ & POWER.

had a majority of the media/elites favored cannibalism, BOTH would have offered WH recipes for cooking PEOPLE at least 50 ways!

free dixie,sw

[Non-Sequitur]

Get your facts straight. Father was killed by a unionist from a long festering dispute. Bill did just deserts to the the men who did the deed.

I have my facts straight. Were that you could say the same.

"On May 12, 1862, their (Bill Anderson and his brother) father was killed by a man named Arthur I. Baker. According to Bailey, who was a newspaper publisher and historian, Baker had led a party of neighbors on the trail of some horse theives who turned out, when captured, to be Bill and Jim (Anderson). The boys managed to secure their release from jail and disappear, but their father was furious at Baker; the betrayal was all the more aggravating because Baker had been courting one of the Anderson daughters, then abruptly announced shortly after the boy's arrest that he would marry a young schoolteacher instead.

On the morning of the wedding, the elder Anderson entered Baker's kitchen and moved through the house, carrying a double-barrel shotgun with both hammers cocked. The prospective bridegroom, who was in a second-floor room dressing for the ceremony, herd the frightened exclamations of the servants and guests, picked up his own shotgun, ran to the head of the stairs, and cut loose at Anderson as he was climbing toward him. The charge penetrated the chest and angled downwards.

The wedding went on as scheduled..."

That is from The Devil Knows How To Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill by Edward E. Leslie, pp 182-183. Leslie cites a number of county sources to support his story.

[BlueMondaySkipper]

The simple truth is that Taney remained on the Supreme Court bench as Chief Justice until his death in 1863

So Lincoln had him killed?? /sarcasm

[Non-Sequitur]

Men of fighting age weren't "innocent"......

So any civilian of military age could be shot down in the street and it was acceptable to you? Or just Unionists?

[Zeroisanumber]

I heard someone on talk radio say that during the civil war Lincoln had his media detracters thrown in the bottom of a war ship until the war was over. But I can't find any facts on-line to back it up.

There were some reporters arrested and detained for a time, but these were mostly in the border states and acting as propogandists for the Confederacy. For a while the Chicago Tribune was shut down, but that was the action of Gen. Rosencrans and not Abe Lincoln. I haven't heard anything about reporters being held in a warship, likely that's the radio host mistaking U.S. POW's from the Revolutionary War with prisoners in the Civil War. There wouldn't really be a reason to hold prisoners in a warship since there were plenty of prisons and prison camps that they could have been sent to.

[Ditto]

At that time, nearly all newspaper deliveries were made by mail, so this action put every one of the papers out of circulation.

Nonsense! Where do you get this crap?

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Au contraire, I said payback was a bitch. The unionist's sowed the wind, at Lawrence, they reaped the whirlwind from a desperately wounded adversary.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Link please. I gave two, you gave none.

[Ditto]

So Lincoln had him killed?? /sarcasm

Don't be surprised if the research of noted historian BlueMondaySkipper ends up being the source material for Lincoln's murder of Taney in Tommy DiLusional's next edition. ;~))

[Non-Sequitur]

Order from Lincoln to General John A. Dix, May 18, 1864, on the establishment of his military dictatorship over the First Amendment.

Pea you are as full of crap as the proverbial Thanksgiving turkey.

"In May 1864, Joseph Howard, fomer New York Times reporter, gadfly, and journalistic hack fallen on hard times, hoped to make a killing on the gold market with a phony presidential proclamation. He teamed with another out-of-favor journalist and drafted a text disguised as an Associated Press dispatch that acknowledged recent military failures, called for a day of national fasting, humiliation and prayer, and announced a draft call for 400,000 more men. Copies were sent to the New York papers about three o'clock in the morning, after the close of the normal business day and while the final type forms were being locked up. There were, however, enough errors in style and presentation that most papers were at least skeptical and at best conviced it was a hoax. Most, that is, except for the World and the Journal of Commerce.

The bogus story appeared in the editions of May 8, 1864, and in the normal course of business, was picked up and put on the wire by the New York headquarters of the Associated Press. In the normal course of business, gold rose by 10 percent. Also, in the normal course of business, New York military commander Gen. John Dix asked Washington for verification and the Associated Press general agent in New York sent a query to the Washington bureau: How had they missed such an important story. Quick action by the government blocked transport of the papers on a ship just about to sail for Europe, and timely bulletins published in most papers knocked the story back down, along with the price of gold.

On the presumption that the World and the Journal were responsible for the fraud, General Dix was sent to sieze the offenders...The source of the hoax was soon tracked to Howard and his friend, who each spent a few months in jail as a consequence."

That's from Blue & Gray in Black & White: Newspapers in the Civil War by Brayton Harris, pp 106-107. So please point out where the First Amendment gives a paper the right to commit financial fraud?

[Non-Sequitur]

Link please. I gave two, you gave none.

I gave you the source. The book is not on line.

[Non-Sequitur]

Au contraire, I said payback was a bitch. The unionist's sowed the wind, at Lawrence, they reaped the whirlwind from a desperately wounded adversary.

So any massacre of rebels supporters would be justified in your eyes because of Lawrence? Why not admit it was tit for tat throughout the war? You can justify murdering innocent Unionists and admit that the murder of innocent southern supporters was equally justifiable. Does that sum up your position?

[rustbucket]

Arrest him for what? Mere criticizm of the government should not be grounds for arrest and it wasn't, regardless of what you all would have us believe.

Don't you ever look anything up? Guess not -- I know better than to ask. Here apparently is what he was arrested for.

Case of Henry A. Reeves.

This person was arrested by order of the Secretary of State about the 2nd of September, 1861, at Greenport, Long Island, and committed to Fort Lafayette. He was the editor of a paper published at Greenport called the Republican Watchman, which by its secession teachings and attacks upon the acts of the officers of the United States Government and the Administration afforded aid and comfort to the insurrectionists.

Attacks on the acts of officers of the US government? Where was John McCain and CFR when Lincoln needed them? You can't criticize the government or its officers! < / sarc>