Lincoln's Wrath, by Jeffrey Manber and Neil Dahlstrom

Lincoln's Wrath: Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a Prresident's Mission to Destroy the Press, by Jeffrey Manber and Neil Dahlstrom
Sourcebooks, 2005
307 pages plusappendices, Bibliography, Notes and Index. 8 pages of glossy b&w photos
Library: 342.7308 MAN

Description
In the blistering summer of 1861, the North was ablaze. At night, thuggish mobs entered newspaper offices, burning papers and tossing printing presses out of windows. In broad daylight, army units attacked their fellow townsmen, threatening the lives of publishers and their families. In Baltimore, a prison housed governors, members of Congress, mayors and editors. All who faced this wrath shared one thing: they had publically opposed President Lincoln and the dawning Civil War.

Lincoln's Wrath tells the incredible story of the overlooked chapter of the Civil War, when the government pressured and physically shut down any Northern newspaper that voiced opposition to the war. The effect was a complete dismantling of the free press.

In the midst stood publisher John Hodgson, an angry bigot so hated that a local newspaper gleefully reported his defeat in a barfight. He was also firmly against Lincoln and the war-an opinion he expressed loudly through his opposition newspaper.

When his press was destroyed, first by a mob, then by US Marshals, Hodgson decided to take on the entire United States in a dramatic courtroom valley. Through the course of the trial, one impending question loomed: How far did the conspiracy against the press go? Was it the work of local thugs or state officials? Or did the orders come from the Executive Mansion in Washington from President Lincoln himself? To discover this answer Hodgson would risk imprisonment or worse-and the answer would determine the future of free speech in the United States.

Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Fire in the North
1. The Newspaper President
2. That Tory Hodgson
3. Publishing and Politics
4. The First Battleground
5. The Loyal Opposition
6. Summer of Rage
7. The Jeffersonian is Mobbed
8. Suffering for Liberties

II. A True Acccount of the United States of America vs the Jeffersonian Newspaper
9. The Cost of Their Convictions
10. "Have we a government?"
11. The Government Conspiracy
12. Hodgson vs the United States of America
13. Mere TRespassers
14. Repercussions

Epilogue
Appendix A: The full text of Judge Lowrie's Charge to the Jury
About the Authors
Bibliography
Endnotes
Index