Contents
The Civil War
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln felt compelled to suspend certain rights, including freedom of speech to a certain extent. He did this to fulfill his ultimate goal of preserving the Union. He suspended habeas corpus, and would not allow elected representatives from southern states to enter Congress. Lincoln’s goals were admirable and saved The United States of America, but he was placed in a very difficult situation. I think that he finally decided that the states that had seceded were no longer covered by the Bill of Rights, or the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, while many criticized him, he made his decisions based on what he truly believed what was in the best interest of The United States of America. He had no intention of allowing our country to be divided into two or more countries.
Tens of thousands of Northern citizens were imprisoned without due process by the Lincoln administration (as many as 38,000 by one estimate in the Columbia Law Journal) were overwhelmingly plain citizens from all walks of life who simply expressed doubt over the administration's unconstitutional and despotic policies, including the shutting down of more than 300 opposition newspapers and the mass arrest of political dissenters by the military. Tens of thousands of Northern political prisoners spent months in a series of gulags, such as Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor, which came to be known as "the American Bastille."
The Lincoln administration cast a very wide net indeed in rounding up any and all political opponents in the Northern states. Anyone overheard questioning virtually anything the administration had done, let alone publishing critical articles or editorials in newspapers, could land in prison without any due process. In fact, Lincoln himself even argued that those who simply remained silent and did not actively support his administration should also be subject to imprisonment.
Here is a Lincoln reflection on the subject, from the Collected Works of Lincoln:
The man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his Government is discussed cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy; much more if he talks ambiguously – talks for his country with "buts" and "ifs" and "ands."
Thus, in Lincoln's opinion anyone who did not openly and publicly support his administration and its policies was a traitor, susceptible to being prosecuted as such, and hanged if found guilty. What could possibly be more tyrannical than punishing silence as a crime with a death sentence? Could Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, or Alexander Hamilton have ever even entertained such thoughts? Madison (the "father of the Constitution") was president during the War of 1812, which coincided with a very serious New England secession movement led by Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering. It culminated with the Hartford Secession Convention of 1814, yet Madison never implemented any such repression, nor is there evidence that he even considered it.
Free speech was illegal for the duration of the Lincoln administration. That's how modern historians and propagandists get away with lying to the public about the alleged "unity" of Northern opinion during the war. Of course there was relative "unity"; dissenting opinions were violently censored and the purveyors of those opinions imprisoned.
The political prisoners in Fort Lafayette ranged from mayors, state legislators, ex-governors, business owners and newspaper editors, to "common traders and impoverished farmers." These men were naturally bitter about their circumstances and were outspoken about it. Consequently, writes Sprague, "Fort Lafayette was the only place in the country where a man could speak freely."
Francis Biddle [Attorney General under Franklin Roosevelt], once remarked that the Constitution "has not greatly bothered any wartime president." This of course is untrue with regard to Lincoln's predecessors, none of whom would ever have dreamed of declaring themselves to be uncompromising dictators no matter what dangers the nation faced.