Page 120 - Dragon Flood

Following the ransacking of Hodgson’s newspaper, he continued to write articles that he
sent out for publication in other newspapers. That the mob violence done to his business
was approved by the Lincoln administration was further evidenced when not many days
later his building and all that was in it was seized by two United State’s marshal’s deputies.

They handed William a document. In part, it called for the deputies to “take, hold, and
keep possession of the building, as well as all property of every kind whatsoever, used in
and about the publication of said newspaper...”

The document handed to them revealed the takeover of the building and the suppression
of the newspaper were being taken “upon the authority of the president of the United
States.”
[Source: Ibid]

A wave of arrests now swept the nation as the Lincoln administration sought to silence all
dissent. Especially targeted were any Americans who had the power to sway public opinion.
These men were arrested, held without charges, and were granted no opportunity to defend
themselves in court.

There was a structure in the harbor of Baltimore that brought to life the fears of the
antiwar editors. Though conceived as a fort, it was transformed in the opening days of
the Civil War into a prison - a place to house the men who opposed Lincoln and his war.

Rarely in American history have there been prisons like Fort McHenry in Baltimore and
Fort Monroe in New York and a dozen more scattered through the Union. Through their
gates passed the entire spectrum of American society of the 1860s, apparently united only
in their ability to sway the voters to turn against the conduct of the war.

“Among the prisoners may be found representatives of every grade of society,” wrote the
author of the 1863 pamphlet Bastilles of the North. “Governors of state, foreign ministers,
members of Congress and of different state legislatures, mayors, police commissioners...
doctors, civil, naval, and military... mechanics (especially machinists and inventors,
whom the government regards as a dangerous class); editors of newspapers, religious
and political...”

Those taken to prison were all the living embodiment of the power of the Confiscation Act.
As explained by one prisoner, these men were referred to as “prisoners of state, a term
happily hitherto unknown on this side of the Atlantic, the sound of which instinctively
carries us to Italy and Austria, or the blackest period in the history of France...”

Overall, it is estimated that more than twelve thousand arrests of noncombatant citizens
were made during the Civil War.
[Source: Ibid]

People of God, although this series main focus is to expose the level of deception that most
Christians are operating under, and I have been focusing on some of the actual events of
history to reveal how a false historical view of America as a Christian nation has been