Pro-Slavery censorship of the news via the Post-office.
The New York Times, June 16, 1860
The citizens of the Border States are at last beginning to raise their voices against the wholesale robbery, of which the United States Post-office is now being made the instrument by the Pro-Slavery zealots of the South, with the active connivance of Mr. Postmaster-General HOLT. Twenty-one citizens of Kent County, Maryland, have determined not to leave the task of defending their rights any longer to the Northern Press alone, but to stand up for them themselves, and have accordingly protested solemnly and publicly against the action of the Grand Jury of the county in presenting newspapers and books as “incendiary” by wholesale, and thus preventing their delivery to the owners by the Post-office, under Mr. HOLT’s rule.
In Austria and Russia, and all other despotic countries, no matter how rigid the censorship of the Press, newspapers and periodicals are never entirely prohibited by name. The meanest tyrants of those regions have the honesty to examine each number separately, and stop it or let it pass, according to the nature of the contents. The issue of Jan. 1 is never confiscated, because that of July 1 denied the divine right of Kings. They have enough respect for the rights of property, if they have none for free speech, to appoint a censor to read before condemning. The Southern oligarchy, however, in this as in many other respects, show themselves infinitely clumsier and more brazenfaced in the practice of the arts of tyranny, than their Neapolitan and Muscovite prototypes. They have neither manliness enough to establish a regular censorship, nor courage enough to leave the Press alone. A mob either marches in arms upon a solitary printer, and wrecks his office or ruins his property, or a Grand Jury presents half of the readable literature of the country as dangerous, and leaves its suppression to the Postmasters. A man subscribes and pays for a publication, which the common law of the Constitution entitles him to read, which is of necessity perfectly harmless till a jury pronounce it to be otherwise; a crowd of lynchers, dignified with the name of a Grand Jury, prohibit him from receiving it, and the Postmaster from circulating it, not only amongst the slaves or vassals of the community, but amongst the slave owners, the white aristocracy, the “order of nobility,” of which Mr. MASON is so proud.
With the restrictions which Southern whites are pleased to place on their own reading, we, of course, have nothing to do. If any body of men in America are fools enough to eschew books and newspapers, because the contents are now and then disagreeable, it is their affair, not ours. If the majority of the Southern people are bent upon sacrificing their minds as well as their bodies on the altar of Slavery, we may think them silly, but they are welcome to the enjoyment of their whim. But when they set about making the Federal Post-office instrumental in imposing their barbaric regulations upon an unwilling minority, we at the North have a good deal to say in the matter. They may bludgeon and tar and feather everybody who takes any “incendiary” paper as much as they please; but we protest against the Postmasters, whom we pay, being employed, in the dirty work of their censorship, prying into men’s letters and newspapers, and stopping everything that a batch of Carolina farmers may think dangerous reading. The Post-office is mainly supported by the North. All its profits are derived from Northern letters. Through the greater portion of the South it is a luxury which the neighborhood cannot afford, and which is supplied to the inhabitants by the National Treasury at great cost. To have it converted in these very places into a branch of the local police for the maintenance of a regime utterly opposed to the spirit of our institutions, and which the majority of the citizens of the United States abhor and repudiate, is more than average patience can long submit to, Mr. HOLT’s position on this question is about as tenable as Mr. TOUCEY’s on parliamentary law, or Mr. FITCH’s on the right of petition. All three of them seem bent on ascertaining the exact point at which the endurance of the public ceases.
We hope that in the approaching canvass this device of converting the Post-office into an engine of Pro-Slavery despotism will be thoroughly shown up. If the success of the Republican Party were not desirable on any other ground, it would be highly desirable for the purpose of putting an end to this disgraceful effort to make a large and highly civilized community like ours a participant in a barbarian crusade against free speech. When the new Administration comes into power, it must inform its Post-office employes distinctly and clearly that their only duty, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, is to deliver to the owners all letters, papers and packages, properly paid for. Neither the Constitution nor the laws have declared any book or periodical non-deliverable by reason of the nature of its contents. Whatever a Postmaster is bound to deliver in New-York he is bound to deliver in Maryland. His business is to say to the State authorities, that whatever comes into his hands he must give up on demand to the person to whom it is addressed. If the State authorities wish to prevent its circulation, they must prevent the owner from applying for it, or punish him for having it in his possession. With all this the United States has nothing to do. The mobs and grand juries must arrange it with their victims.
If any State declares it will not have Postmasters within its boundaries who take this view of their duties, and who will not act as censors, the remedy is simple—let it go without them. If any district in Maryland, or elsewhere, does not like a Post-office which confines itself to the delivery of all mail matter which it receives, the Postmaster-General has the remedy in his own hands. This is the only kind of Post-office he can supply, and if any town or village does not like it, let it provide a better one for itself. If the Federal authorities were suddenly to break off all postal communication with Kent County, in Maryland, we feel assured that the rest of the country would not be seriously inconvenienced thereby,—that the United States would flourish the same as ever and that the Grand Jury would very soon ask for its restoration upon the usual terms.