Lincoln's Wrath

Book excerpt: In the blistering summer of 1861, President Lincoln began pressuring and ordering the physical shutdown of any Northern newspaper that voiced opposition to the war. These attacks were sometimes carried out by soldiers, sometimes by angry mobs under cover of darkness. Either way, the effect was a complete dismantling of the free press. In the midst stood publisher John Hodgson, an angry bigot so hated that a local newspaper gleefully reported his defeat in a bar fight. He was also firmly against Lincoln and the war--an opinion he expressed loudly through his newspaper. When his press was destroyed, first by a mob, then by U.S. Marshals "upon authority of the President of the United States," Hodgson decided to take on the entire United States. Thus began a trial in which one small-town publisher risked imprisonment or worse, and the future of free speech hung in the balance. Based on 10 years of original research, Lincoln's Wrath brings to life one of the most gripping, dramatic and unknown stories of U.S. history.