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.
