Page 119 - Dragon Flood

On August 6, 1861, President Lincoln signed S. 25, “An Act to Confiscate Property Used for
Insurrectionary Purposes...”

Any persons engaged in supporting “the present or any future insurrection” by aiding and
abetting the enemy in any form shall be open to the seizure of property used for that aim.

What it meant was that any Southern supporter in the North could face the loss of their
property if it was used to help the Confederacy... Union Democrats feared that the
administration would consider an anti-Lincoln newspaper to be a tool against the Union
and hence, it could be confiscated. And not just the newspaper but the type, the press, the
office, and all associated with it.
[Source: Ibid]

These were not idle worries. “Two days after the passage of the Confiscation Act, soldiers
of the First New Hampshire sacked the Democratic Standard in Concord, Maine.” Then the
courts got involved, signaling their agreement with the President and the Congress.

On August 15, 1861, a week after the signing of the Confiscation Act... the administration’s
battle against the antiwar newspapers broadened to include the courts. A grand jury was
convened in New York... to determine the legality of indicting Northern newspapers that
openly opposed the war...

Each paper identified was now a target and was publicly warned to change their editorial
tone or face the consequences... The government quickly used the event to begin seizing
the newspapers named, and stopped their shipment through the mail.

On August 22, the newspapers named by the grand jury were suspended from the mail
per order of the New York postmaster. As the papers arrived in Northern cities that day
by train, the United States marshal for the Eastern District seized all copies. The legal
justification was the War Department’s General Order No. 67, which ordered that all
correspondence and communications, verbal or written, that put the “public safety” at
risk, should be confiscated. The punishment for creating such correspondence and
communications, according to the order, was death.
[Source: Ibid]

Not So Free Speech