entered the lines in violation of Sherman's order, wrote back offensive criticisms of the general to his paper. Sherman, anxious "to establish the principle that citizens shall not, against the orders of the competent military superior, attend a military expedition, report its proceedings, and comment on its officers", took up the case vigorously. He caused Knox's communication to be read to him paragraph by paragraph, showed him the instructions and orders covering the point, and then had him excluded from the Union lines on order of Grant, commander of the department. An appeal was made to the President, but Lincoln declined to act over the head of General Grant and Knox was not readmitted into the lines.[1] In these instances one glimpses the constant friction between the army and the press, but so utterly lax was the treatment of war correspondents that these few cases of discipline had, after all, but slight effect upon the whole problem of news control.
Action against newspapers in the civil courts yielded no results. In the first place, the whole genius of American law is opposed to the prosecution of journalists for such utterances in their papers as constitute offenses against the government. Editors and proprietors of papers were, indeed, legally responsible for what their sheets contained, but this responsibility could only be made effective by the vote of a jury in an action for libel. It would appear that personal abuse, as for instance the public slandering of a general, would come under the law of libel, but even so the public interest involved obtains no recognition. Moreover, a libel suit is, in practice, usually found to be an inadequate remedy, and American law may be considered both defective and uncertain in the enforcement of responsibility of newspapers. Such laws as we now have requiring the registration of the owners, managers, and editors of publications were not in existence during the Civil War, and it was an easy matter to conceal the actual ownership and responsible management of a newspaper.[2] When abuse of the government was in question, there seemed to be no adequate way of securing action by judicial process against offending journals. There was, it is true, a law which severely punished anyone who resisted the draft or counselled resistance,[3] and the Treason Act of July 17,
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 447–452; The Sherman Letters, pp. 187–188.
- ↑ The facts in the libel suit of Opdyke v. Marble revealed a studied effort to conceal the real ownership of the New York World. New York Daily News, October 6, 1864.
- ↑ For resisting the draft, John Mullaly, editor and proprietor of the Metropolitan Record, New York, was prosecuted under the act of February 29, 1864, but was discharged on the ground that the draft had not gone into actual operation. In announcing his opinion, U. S. Commissioner Osborn upheld the right of citizens to criticize governmental measures. New York World, August 29, 1864.
