Under the Lincoln Administration, did the United States government ever censor or close down publications of any newspapers?

eyhung

Yes. " In May 1861 the New York Journal of Commerce published a list of 100 Northern newspapers that opposed the Lincoln administration. Lincoln ordered the Postmaster General and the army to shut them all down. A few of them reopened only after promising not to criticize the Lincoln administration." http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo39.html Jun 06 12, 8:44 PM

Datsmeharse

The May 1861 item above never happened. Habeus Corpus was suspended in Maryland in 1861 mainly to keep Maryland from seceding (and leaving DC surrounded by hostile land). The government took over all the telegraph lines out of the city during that year, and imposed strict censorship under the direction of Secetary of War Stanton, who felt that press reports of troop movements coming from Washington were aiding the enemy. Censorship was also imposed during World Wars I and II; and habeus corpus was suspended in Hawaii following Pearl Harbor. In 1864 Stanton ordered two NY newspapers, (The World and The Journal of Commerce) shut down for publishing a bogus Presidential Proclamation that resulted in a mild Wall Street panic. Lincoln supported the action; the papers were reopened in a week after it was learned they were duped by a counterfeit AP dispatch, all of which was designed to drive the price of gold up. It is however likely that if the pro-Lincoln papers such as the NY Times had also published the fake story (their editors were suspicious and didn't print it) that Stanton wouldn't have reacted so harshly. http://www.mrlincolnandnewyork.org/inside.asp?ID=37&subjectID=3 Jun 09 12, 4:03 PM