Appeal 1-1-1857
It is said that, unlike the Lincoln administration, the CSA never suppressed dissenting opinions. The Memphis Daily Appeal says that being able to state military facts is necessary to back up its opinions and hold the Confederate leadership accountable.
From The New-York Times February 2, 1862:
NOTICING MILITARY MOVEMENTS.
The Memphis Appeal bitterly assails the proposed law to prohibit the newspapers from publishing military information. The Appeal says” it is palpably unnecessary and unconstitutional, dangerous and despotic.” Also:
“It is the indirect effect, it [if] it is not the concealed purpose of this measure, to restrain the free expression of journalistic opinion upon the conduct of the war, inasmuch as the idea of criticism involves the necessity very frequently of alluding to the movements of the army, as in the case of the campaign in Missouri and Western Virginia. In such a light we must regard the movement as an attempt to abridge freedom of opinion and of the Press, under the same specious apology of self-preservation which, dictates the vile censorship over newspapers in France and Austria, and which was urged to justify the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the indiscriminate incarceration of mere political offenders throughout the dominions of ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”
It is another thing entirely to decide upon the propriety public journals ereticizing [criticizing] the means of prosecuting the war, but the right to do so is undoubted. There has been times since the commencement of this conflict, and they will repeat themselves many times more before it is closed, when “the numbers, disposition and movements” of our forces ought to be made known to the people, by way of exposing facts, in most cases known to the enemy, and tending to show where rests the responsibility for imbecility, negligence and disaster. The Administration, wrapt up in the army operations on the Potomac, may see fit to neglect the war in Missouri, and allow a gallant people to go on in a struggle, fruitless unless aided, and yet the Press, as the potent voice of the people, be forbidden to mention the mere retreat of Gen. PRICE to Springfield, or to proclaim the necessity of his having reinforcements.
The image above is from the Library of Congress, where you can read a brief history of The Memphis Daily Appeal. The newspaper refused to be silenced during the Union occupation of Memphis and became the “Moving Appeal” as it kept trying to stay ahead of the advancing federal armies.
