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[me] Mobs in some cases; army troops in others.

[you] Which cases were which?

Too lazy to look in the link I provided? Here is what they cited:

On February 23, 1863, the Davenport Daily Gazette in Iowa reported that some seventy-five convalescent soldiers from a near-by military hospital entered the office of the Keokuk, Iowa Constitution, wrecked the presses and dumped the type out the window. (65) In the spring of 1863, the Crisis and the Marietta, Ohio Republican, a Democratic paper, suffered damages at the hands of a mob of soldiers. (66) The next year a number of other newspapers in the Midwest, including the Mahoning, Ohio Sentinel, Lancaster, Ohio Eagle, Dayton Empire, Fremont Messenger, and the Chester, Illinois Picket Guard experienced similar visitations. (67)

Here is confirmation from another site that the Picket Guard was destroyed by soldiers:

In 1864 soldiers stationed in Cairo marched a short distance from their camp to destroy the press and offices of the Chester Picket Guard, a persistent critic of the war and administration.

It is unclear from the information I found what kinds of pro-Union mobs destroyed the Easton paper and tarred and feathered the Massachusetts editor. I posted the exact wording about those incidents that I found on the web.

I also posted the exact wording I found about the Bloomington Times -- that was listed as a pro-Union mob. I also quoted PeaRidge's post that stated a mob of soldiers demolished the offices of the Democratic Standard in DC and a Unionist mob destroyed the printing facilities of the Bangor Democrat.

Apparently it wasn't very safe to say anything against Lincoln in the North.

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.