Mobtown Massacre (ePub)

Winner of the 2020 Baltimore History Prize, this is a gripping account of how a Federalist editor risked his life to defend his anti-war views.

With a bitterly divided nation plunged into the War of 1812, Alexander Hanson penned an anti-war editorial that provoked a violent standoff that crippled the city of Baltimore and left Hanson beaten within an inch of his life. This little-known episode in American history-complete with a midnight jailbreak, bloodthirsty mobs and unspeakable acts of torture-helped shape the course of war, the Federalist Party and the nation's very notion of the freedom of the press. Josh Cutler's history of the Mobtown Massacre offers a lesson in liberty that reverberates today.

"A compelling story that's as timely today as it was two centuries ago." -Congressman William R. Keating

"A remarkably vivid, engaging and very readable account of a brief but major event in Baltimore history . . . which reflected the sharp political divisiveness of the time at the start of the War of 1812, and had important implications for freedom of the press and the war itself."-Charles Markell, board member, Baltimore City Historical Society

"A timely and scholarly examination of one man's struggle for freedom of the press."-Fred Dorsey, Howard County, MD historian

"Cutler's book tells not only of politics of that era and the controversy of a war that ultimately led to the burning of the White House and the writing of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' by Francis Scott Key, but also how it challenged America's devotion to a free press." -The Baltimore Sun