A Big Liar Gagged
New York Daily News, April 23, 1861
The telegraph wires being destroyed, the "special and general Washington dispatches" cannot come. Thank Heaven! The biggest liar in the land is gagged. The liar that made the war is silenced. The false witness is dumb. Now, let peacemakers speak. The army of special reporters are like Othello—their occupation's gone. Let them now go to the war they brought on; and, if they inherit the glory of soldiers' graves, no one will envy them the honor. But now their successors appear. "Gentlemen" arrive most miraculously every hour from "the seat of war." They bring the same sort of stories exactly that "our own correspondents" telegraphed. They tell about the Union sentiments of the South! and the Baltimore "mob." It is a singular circumstance that all Maryland seems to feel exactly like this "mob." In New York, when quiet, unobtrusive men are set upon by hundreds of excited fellows—it is only the "people" who are boisterous; but, in Baltimore, it's all a mob business.
And the opportune successors of the special reporters, the "eye witnesses," the "persons just from there," and the "highly respected subscribers," that send this gammon to the Press, all continue to humbug the public with fictitious news. Would to Heaven the whole cavalcade of misrepresenters was like the wires—cut off!