Monday, April 25, 2011

Free Speech in Cincinnati

Related to my recent post  about "ruffianism" in Cincinnati, here is  yet another article from the Covington Journal of April 20, 1861. I guess I should  just link to that page and let everyone read the whole issue, since I'm posting so many entries from it, but I'll go ahead and post this one too. I'm keeping it separate from the "ruffianism" article to keep these posts at a more reasonable length.

Free Speech in Cincinnati
A few nights since the proprietors of the Cincinnati Enquirer had to call in the aid of two hundred armed friends to protect their office from the threatened assault of a Black Republican mob.


Such paragraphs as the following are exultingly paraded in the coercion papers of Cincinnati as an evidence of the healthy public sentiment over there:


"A fellow on Fourth street Saturday night, expressed the opinion that Sumter ought to have been taken. The next moment he was sprawling on the bowdlers, most lustily crying murder. A 'peaceable citizen' knocked him over." 


"A horse-dealer, who made a similar expression in a stable in the western part of the city this morning, had a cane broken over his head, but was permitted to hurry off to a surgeon's."


Out in Brighton, a couple of fellows, jokingly offered to raise a Secession flag. The idea created such an excitement, that the jokers had to make themselves scarce."

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