ABSTRACT
In Constitutional Problems under Abraham Lincoln, University of Illinois historian James G. Randall detailed the ways in which Lincoln's administration and the Union military restrained the Northern—usually Democratic—press during the Civil War. Among the most outspoken opponents of Lincoln in the North, Democratic editors in Iowa spoke consistently and vehemently against not only the war, but also Lincoln's infringement on civil liberties. Lincoln and the Republican press presented it to the public as a war measure, one designed to turn freed African-American slaves into Union soldiers. Indiana's Democratic editors also reacted with venom, and faulted Lincoln's government for allowing Burnside to convict a former Democratic congressional representative who had criticized the president in a speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio. In Chicago, a group of Republicans, including Lincoln's friend Senator Lyman Trumbull, met to sign a petition urging the president to revoke the order.
