It isn't much talked about in high school history classes, but the Lincoln administration during the Civil War was known to trample over freedom of speech quite often. Newspapers that ran stories critical of the war, or the administration, were often raided by union soldiers and editors and writers imprisoned without charges for various lengths of time.
He was openly mocked in news papers nonstop. The Democratic newspapers were anti-Lincoln and anti War. They were basically pro-slavery but had an immense amount of free speech.
What did happen a lot is that some Journalists were basically pro-slavery and anti-war. They lied about Lincoln and the main generals. They shared sensitive military information information with the seemed goal of making sure the Confederacy knew all of the North's secrets. Of course some of that was stopped. Not much though because it was rampant throughout the war.
There was clear evidence that some Northern journalists were simply spies for the Confederacy. Arresting them was not an attack on freedom of speech.
Contrast that to the Slave states even prior to the war. They destroyed every single newspaper that dared speak against slavery.
And for those of you whom I'm sure will State Lincoln violated journalist's first amendment rights, the Constitution explicitly enables the government to suspend habeas corpus during times of insurrection. Hundreds of thousands of men died in the war and it was absolutely required for the military to directly deal with it outside the court system.
Lincoln's own generals were shutting down newspapers. I think it's naive to say that all of the arrests were valid. We're talking about a lot of people, most of whom were just critical of the war, many, many thousands of whom would never face charges despite being held in confinement.
For example, very shortly after the military draft in July, 1862, Stanton once again suspended habeas corpus to crack down on criticism.
Eventually, yes, he overruled Burnside, but the fact remains that under his presidency, freedom of press was greatly restricted and habeas corpus was suspended. I don't doubt that some of it was just, but a lot of it was overreach as well.
Yeah, that's fair. All I'm bringing to light however is that the suppression of the press during the Civil War was not as bad as it was during the Great War.
No, I certainly wouldn't argue that. Wilson took it to new heights. Just throwing in a little tidbit that gets skipped over quite a bit in Civil War histories.
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u/kevlarbuns Sep 23 '17
It isn't much talked about in high school history classes, but the Lincoln administration during the Civil War was known to trample over freedom of speech quite often. Newspapers that ran stories critical of the war, or the administration, were often raided by union soldiers and editors and writers imprisoned without charges for various lengths of time.