Milo Hascall and the Suppression of Democratic Newspapers in Civil War Indiana -- My dissertation is a policy case study that examines the effect of official suppression on the Democratic press in Indiana during the spring of 1863. Indiana’s Democratic newpspaper editors were subject to General Order No. 9, which proclaimed that all newspaper editors and public speakers that encouraged resistance to the draft or any other war measure would be treated as traitors. The order was made by Brigadier General Milo Smith Hascall, commander of the District of Indiana, who was amplifying General Order No. 38 of Major General Ambrose Everts Burnside, the commander of the Department of the Ohio. Burnside’s order declared that criticism of the president and the war effort was tantamount to “declaring sympathies with the enemy.” As a result of Hascall’s edict, eleven Democratic editors in Indiana faced suspension of their newspapers. Throughout the war in Indiana, Union soldiers and/or Republican activists intimidated other Democratic editors, ransacking their offices and sometimes running them out of business. President Abraham Lincoln, who had suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1862, claiming presidential prerogatives given by the Constitution at times of invasion or rebellion, had some misgivings along political lines about the intimidation of Democratic newspapers, but let it continue in Indiana for from April 25 to June 6, 1863.

Eventually, because of the machinations of Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton, Lincoln’s War Department wired Burnside to relieve Hascall of his command in Indianapolis, thus ending the season of official suppression after only six weeks. Burnside would rein in the Chicago Times and suppress delivery of anti-Lincoln papers and books via the post office, but no government policy would squelch the press in Indiana again. This study looks at this episode in its cultural context, considering political, legal, military, social, and journalistic factors. Primary documents that were analyzed include Indiana newspapers from 1863 and letters and correspondences from the principals involved, including Hascall, Burnside, Lincoln, and Congressman Joseph Ketchum Edgerton, who opposed the press suppression. This inquiry found that Democratic newspapers in majority Republican counties were more likely to face suppression, even if constraints on the Democratic press were more necessary in majority Democratic counties. The study concludes that while a short-term chilling effect occurred in Indiana, the free-press tradition survived in the long run. Although four of the eleven suppressed Democratic newspapers were out of business by April of 1865, all but two of the eleven were in operation by 1875, just as nine of the eleven Republican newspapers in those cities still existed in 1875.

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