In 1812, a violent mob broke into a Baltimore newspaper office and attacked its owner Alexander Contee Hanson, whose articles opposing the War of 1812 angered them. In an example of lack of protection of press freedom, government officials refused to defend the newspaper owner and his defenders, even in jail, where another attack occurred, killing one and disfiguring another.
Journalists
Joseph Pulitzer came to the United States in 1864 as a restless Jewish immigrant from Hungary. He knew little English. Despite poor health and weak eyesight, he had contracted with a bounty hunter in Germany to be paid to fight for the North in the Civil War as a substitute for a draftee – something
In the 1847 Ritchie Affair, the U.S. Senate revoked floor privileges its official printer Thomas Ritchie who also was editor of a partisan newspaper after he published an article suggesting a senator was on the side of Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Although the Ritchie affair was short-lived, it raised significant issues about freedom of the press, including free speech during wartime and congressional pressure on political reporting.