The American Civil War was a defining event for the men, women and children who had the terrible fortune of living through it, and it was a turning point in American history, perhaps even world history. “If we believe today...that popular government is the way to go...then the Civil War established the fact that a popular government could survive,” said Stephen B. Oates in the final episode of the mesmerizing nine-part Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War. “So the war becomes...a testament for the liberation of the human spirit for all time.”
Not only did that war transform the ways in which Americans feel toward human bondage and states’ rights, but it gave us many of the things we have today, several of which we simply do not realize. Advancements in medical care, weapons systems and telegraph communications are among the obvious material gains that came as a result of the bloodiest conflict in American history, fought from 1861-1865, but among the oftentimes less-obvious political and social ramifications are centralization of federal power, expansion of the executive branch of government and the deepening of racial rifts that had an impact on American society for longer than a century.
Not only did that war transform the ways in which Americans feel toward human bondage and states’ rights, but it gave us many of the things we have today, several of which we simply do not realize. Advancements in medical care, weapons systems and telegraph communications are among the obvious material gains that came as a result of the bloodiest conflict in American history, fought from 1861-1865, but among the oftentimes less-obvious political and social ramifications are centralization of federal power, expansion of the executive branch of government and the deepening of racial rifts that had an impact on American society for longer than a century.
| Caught in the middle of causes and effects of the Civil War was the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is perhaps the most important of any of the 27 amendments, at least among those in the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments, passed into law by Congress in 1791. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” it reads. While this amendment is perhaps the most important—likely the reason it is first on the list of rights—it is also the most controversial. Since passage of the Bill of Rights, Americans in private and public life alike have argued the importance and implications of the five freedoms granted in the amendment—religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. Especially in wartime, the freedoms of speech, press and petition are oftentimes curbed by the federal government, and at no other time was this truer than during the Civil War. |  An early-to-mid 20th-century photograph with the caption, "The four freedoms. No government censor passes on what may appear in these publications. Crowded newstands such as these, with journals representing every political party and every social theory are possible only in a democracy, where there is freedom of speech and of the press." (Library of Congress) |
A new book by Abraham Lincoln scholar and historian Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion, in part explores the topic of the Lincoln Administration’s handling of Northern newspapers during the Civil War.
Now, I am an unabashed Lincoln fan. I consider him my historical hero for his stances on human dignity and self-worth; his undying yearning to strive for equality; his belief that the U.S. Constitution, above all else, defined his duty to preserve the American Union; and his complicated ambiguity that leaves us with both “the kind of awkward, amiable, storytelling, rail-splitting, frontier folk hero” and “the towering political genius, the moral leader, the shaper of a nation’s destiny, savior of the Union and the Great Emancipator,” in the words of Civil War historian Dr. David W. Blight.
Now, I am an unabashed Lincoln fan. I consider him my historical hero for his stances on human dignity and self-worth; his undying yearning to strive for equality; his belief that the U.S. Constitution, above all else, defined his duty to preserve the American Union; and his complicated ambiguity that leaves us with both “the kind of awkward, amiable, storytelling, rail-splitting, frontier folk hero” and “the towering political genius, the moral leader, the shaper of a nation’s destiny, savior of the Union and the Great Emancipator,” in the words of Civil War historian Dr. David W. Blight.
 A photograph captured by Alexander Gardner on Aug. 9, 1863. Lincoln is holding spectacles and a newspaper. (Library of Congress) | Lincoln, however, was wrong on a few things during his presidency, and at first glance one of these topics was his complacency with preventing “the publication of pro-secession sentiments”; banning “pro-peace newspapers from the U.S. mails”; confiscating “printing materials”; ceasing “the use of the postal service and other exchange routes in and out of the rebellious states”; militarily controlling “Washington’s telegraph wires, the standard medium for transmitting news from city to city”; and intimidating and imprisoning “reporters, editors and publishers who sympathized with the South or objected to an armed struggle to restore the Union,” as Holzer wrote in an excerpt from his new book which appeared in the December 2014 Civil War Times. According to Holzer, “the president, his Cabinet and many Northern newspaper editors believed” that publication of anti-Union sentiments “was morphing from tolerable dissent into nation-threatening treason.” |
Holzer said that Lincoln himself “did not initiate press suppression, and remained ambivalent about its execution,” though he neglected to intervene because he felt disallowing contentious statements assisted the Union war effort by “repair[ing] the mischief of the un-muzzled organs of treason,” according to Henry Raymond, the then-editor of The New York Times. Such complacency has caused Lincoln to be “described by historians as a dictator far more than any other president,” according to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Don Fehrenbacher.
However, despite these harsh claims that could potentially damn Lincoln in the eyes of many hindsight-seeking Americans, it must be recognized that Lincoln’s was a situation faced by no other American president, before or since.
However, despite these harsh claims that could potentially damn Lincoln in the eyes of many hindsight-seeking Americans, it must be recognized that Lincoln’s was a situation faced by no other American president, before or since.
| “The emergency he faced was unprecedented,” wrote Mackubin T. Owens, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College. Lincoln was the chief executive at the only instance of armed civil war in our nation’s history, allowing him to exercise powers allotted by the Constitution, as well as those on which “the Constitution is silent.” According to a 2007 article by Owens, “it is possible to argue that everything Lincoln did was justifiable under the powers stipulated by Article 2 of the Constitution,” which lays out the president’s legal obligations and restrictions, including his duty to perform as “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.” During the Civil War, there was “tangible and unmistakable evidence” of many media outlets’ “substantial and unmistakable complicity with those in armed rebellion,” according to Lincoln himself, which he believed was conclusive evidence worthy of decisive executive action. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “in times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely…to give direction to their affairs, with a confidence as auspicious as it is well-founded.” |  A copy of the United States Constitution, printed on Jan. 12, 1867, featuring watermark images of five Union generals, including William T. Sherman, George G. Meade, Ulysses S. Grant, George H. Thomas and Philip H. Sheridan. The symbolism of these men as "defenders of the Constitution" is obviously at play. (LOC) |
Jefferson also once wrote, “The laws of necessity, of self preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us”—a sentiment echoed by Lincoln, who in turn asked, “are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself to go to pieces, lest that one be violated?” In other words, In the grand scheme of things, is the idea of shutting down a newspaper more detrimental to the health of the United States than the enslavement of 4.2 million human beings or the destruction and hopeful preservation of the American Union?
 A circa 1862-1863 etching of Lincoln with his hand on a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, with the United States Capitol in the background. The etching was drawn and printed in Boston by John H. Bufford (Library of Congress) | Lincoln was a strict constitutionalist who recognized that his powers were limited in times of peace, but at a time during which Americans found themselves in armed conflict against one another—in which thousands of men were being maimed daily, and hundreds of thousands, even millions, of everyday Americans were being somehow affected—he abided by a principle which suggested “that a nation must be able to protect itself in wartime against expression that causes insubordination or actually obstructs the raising of armies,” according to the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University and the Newseum. This sentiment is reflected in a poignant scene in the 2012 Steven Spielberg-directed motion picture Lincoln, during which the sixteenth president—eloquently portrayed by the legendary Daniel Day-Lewis—is discussing (a) the legality of the Emancipation Proclamation, and (b) the importance of enshrining the promise of keeping formerly enslaved persons “then, thenceforward and forever free” (The emancipation issue had its own constitutional questions, which may be described in an entirely different discussion. Perhaps a future blog on that issue will be necessary). |
“Say it’s after the war, and I can no longer use my war powers to just ignore the courts’ decisions, like I sometimes felt I had to do,” declares Day-Lewis as Lincoln, moments after explaining the inclination that “the Constitution gives me war powers, but no one knows just exactly what those powers are. Some say they don’t exist. I don’t know. I decided I needed them to exist to uphold my oath to protect the Constitution.” Though this is an artists’ interpretation by director Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner, it is factual: Above all else, Lincoln’s efforts were made with the Constitution in mind.
“I…am devotedly for [civil liberties] after civil war, and before civil war, and at all times, ‘except when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require’ their suspension,” said Lincoln. And it has been proven that in some cases, the publication of inflammatory statements by Southern-leaning, anti-Union media led to “occasional flurries of intolerant mob rage”; because these newspapers “were so far within the test of direct and dangerous interference with the war,” those dripping with secessionism “were actually causing desertions” in the Union armies, according to Owens. In effect, when taken to the extreme, defamatory press was not just maiming the name of a presidential administration—it was destroying the possibility for the nation’s military, political and diplomatic success.
“I…am devotedly for [civil liberties] after civil war, and before civil war, and at all times, ‘except when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require’ their suspension,” said Lincoln. And it has been proven that in some cases, the publication of inflammatory statements by Southern-leaning, anti-Union media led to “occasional flurries of intolerant mob rage”; because these newspapers “were so far within the test of direct and dangerous interference with the war,” those dripping with secessionism “were actually causing desertions” in the Union armies, according to Owens. In effect, when taken to the extreme, defamatory press was not just maiming the name of a presidential administration—it was destroying the possibility for the nation’s military, political and diplomatic success.
| Hindsight shows us that Lincoln’s actions—and those of his military and political cohorts—against negative Northern newspapers, may have been legally questionable. Regardless, hindsight also shows us that these actions had a historical purpose, and were pursued by a constitutionalist-minded president whose thoughts were always first and foremost focused on the rules and regulations embodied in the defining American document and law of the land. The Union military and government waged “an additional war” in the midst of the oh-so-bloody Civil War, according to Holzer, and in doing so raised questions over the place and purpose of civil liberties in American society. While the Founding Fathers declared the freedom of the press to be important enough to appear in the First Amendment to the Constitution, they also ingrained a system by which the commander in chief could ensure that the federal government could somehow navigate the fine line between being “too strong for the liberties of its own people,” and being “too weak to maintain its own existence,” as voiced by Lincoln in 1861, weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter that sparked the Civil War. |  A circa 1860s rendering of glorified wartime images labeled the "The Union Defenders Certificate in Support & Defence of the Government, the Union and the Constitution of the United States against the Great Rebellion." This was produced by Gibson & Company, and initially appeared in Cincinnati. (Library of Congress) |
That war, which eventually caused at least 620,000 deaths and maimed 1.2 million Americans—North and South—is as dark a chapter as has ever been faced in United States history, though in the end it accomplished magnificent ends: the preservation of a powerful Union, and the death of one of the largest slave societies in the history of western civilization.
 A circa 1865 etching of the lanky, war-weary Lincoln, likely drawn by French artist Pierre Morand. (Library of Congress) | “[S]ay all we done is show the world that democracy isn’t chaos,” to quote once more from Spielberg’s Lincoln, “that there is a great strength in a people’s union? Say we’ve shown that a people can endure awful sacrifice and yet cohere? Mightn’t that save at least the idea of democracy, to aspire to?” That, above all else, is why it is important to understand why Lincoln did what he did to curb destructive press during that awful time—the endurance of “awful sacrifice” is a necessary evil in the process of exhibiting, to the world, the “great strength in a people’s union.” “If we submit ourselves to law…even submit to losing freedoms…we may discover other freedoms previously unknown to us,” goes another wonderfully written line in the film. Hopefully, we may never again be forced to “submit to losing freedoms,” but in a time of perpetual and pestilential war, unfortunately Lincoln had no other choice. From the lessons we gain while looking backward at the flaws of years’ past, we must recognize the oftentimes-terrible realities of our own time and our own future. In doing so, we must prevent all divisive situations in which these freedoms--our freedoms— may be lost, so that their loss is never in question again. |
Further Reading:
The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties - Mark E. Neely Jr. wrote this Pulitzer Prize-winning book in 1992, which still serves as a "comprehensive look at the issues of civil liberties during Lincoln's administration, placing them firmly in the political context of the time."
First Amendment Center - A valuable tool in finding articles, editorials and blog entries pertaining to the First Amendment and its importance in a modern context. This site is run by Vanderbilt University and the Newseum, which is an absolutely amazing, six-floor exhibit space in Washington, D.C., that includes the Cox First Amendment Gallery, which "explores...all [five First Amendment freedoms] through stories of real people who have used their freedoms of speech, press, assembly and petition to express themselves and enact change."
Legal Information Institute - A comprehensive source for all things legal, especially from a federal vantage point. This site is run by the reputable Cornell University Law School.
Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion - Though I have not read it yet, I am looking forward to doing so within the coming months. It is sure to be an engaging look at this oft-forgotten aspect of the Lincoln presidency, written by Holzer, the former co-chairman of The Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and National Humanities Medal Recipient. He has authored, co-authored and edited 46 books and more than 500 magazine and journalistic articles on Lincoln—making him the only man alive who know more about Lincoln than Lincoln knew about Lincoln.
The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties - Mark E. Neely Jr. wrote this Pulitzer Prize-winning book in 1992, which still serves as a "comprehensive look at the issues of civil liberties during Lincoln's administration, placing them firmly in the political context of the time."
First Amendment Center - A valuable tool in finding articles, editorials and blog entries pertaining to the First Amendment and its importance in a modern context. This site is run by Vanderbilt University and the Newseum, which is an absolutely amazing, six-floor exhibit space in Washington, D.C., that includes the Cox First Amendment Gallery, which "explores...all [five First Amendment freedoms] through stories of real people who have used their freedoms of speech, press, assembly and petition to express themselves and enact change."
Legal Information Institute - A comprehensive source for all things legal, especially from a federal vantage point. This site is run by the reputable Cornell University Law School.
Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion - Though I have not read it yet, I am looking forward to doing so within the coming months. It is sure to be an engaging look at this oft-forgotten aspect of the Lincoln presidency, written by Holzer, the former co-chairman of The Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and National Humanities Medal Recipient. He has authored, co-authored and edited 46 books and more than 500 magazine and journalistic articles on Lincoln—making him the only man alive who know more about Lincoln than Lincoln knew about Lincoln.
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