Pro-Union mob violated the 1st Amendment in Bangor

Marcellus Emery was a Bangor Democrat who displayed pro-Southern views in his newspapers. A pro-Union mob sacked his newspaper offices and literally tossed his printing press out a window in 1861.

Emery’s newspaper offices were located on the fourth floor of the Wheelwright Clark Block in downtown Bangor. Bits and pieces of his press littered West Market Square (right side of photo) after a mob sacked his offices. (Brian Swartz Photo)

Freedom of the press – at least the press owned by Bangor Democrat Marcellus Emery – literally flew out the window on Aug. 12, 1861.
By that summer, many Maine Democrats opposed the fledgling Civil War. In his 1967 graduate thesis “Civil War Bangor,” Professor John DiMeglio wrote that Democrat State Committee Chairman Marcellus Emery invited “all men … who are opposed to this unholy Civil War, and in favor of the immediate restoration of peace by negotiation and compromise” to attend the Democratic convention in Augusta in mid-August 1861.
When delegates passed resolutions condemning the war, “the so-called war Democrats bolted, convened on their own [as Union Democrats] and nominated Jameson” to run for governor, DiMeglio noted. “The Democrats who stayed nominated Dana” and effectively became the Peace Party.
Marcellus Emery would throw in with Dana. Born in Frankfort to James and Sally Emery on July 28, 1830, Emery hailed from a politically connected family; maternal grandfather Dr. Ephraim Rowe had helped pen the Maine Constitution. Marcellus Emery attended Yarmouth Academy before graduating from Bowdoin College in 1849.
“Although somewhat reserved in his demeanor, he was an energetic student” who subsequently taught school in Hallowell, tutored in Mississippi, served as an Indiana law clerk, and finally came home in 1857 to pass the Maine bar exam, wrote Crompton Burton, quoted by David Sachsman in “The Civil War and American Journalism.”
That same year, Emery “and other leading Democrats in Penobscot County” bought two Bangor newspapers, the Journal ( a daily) and the Democrat (a weekly), according to Burton. Named the dual editor, Emery ironically renamed the Journal the Daily Union.
In his articles and editorials, Emery ardently supported the South – and pro-Union sympathizers in Bangor paid attention. They exacted their revenge by pitching the Daily Union files from the Bangor Mercantile Association Reading Room in spring 1861.
Losing ad revenue and readers, Emery stopped publishing the Daily Union on June 1. “The business men of the city have simply done their duty in refusing to aid in sustaining a traitorous organ” in Bangor “and have taken precisely the right course to suppress it,” William Wheeler proclaimed in the Whig, a pro-Union and vehemently anti-Emery newspaper.
Even as Manassas casualty lists appeared in Bangor newspapers in late July, Emery exulted in the Confederate victory. He published “President [Jefferson] Davis’s account of the great battle” in the Democrat on July 30 and wrote that “onward the shouting myriads (Union soldiers) will pour, until again met by the unequalled and invincible genius” of Confederate military leaders “who are defending their firesides and their homes, from the ruthless assaults of fanaticism and fury.”
Bangor men had died at Manassas, and a Bangor newspaper had called them “shouting myriads”? On Aug. 10, pro-Union sympathizers packed Norumbega Hall overlooking the Kenduskeag Stream. They adopted a resolution that accused the Democrat of “lending … aid and comfort to the armed enemies of our country, which made its editors, publishers and proprietors guilty of treason,” according to DiMeglio.
An unidentified “leading” man “of the city … signed a pledge to indemnify anyone taking part in an attack on Emery’s office,” DiMeglio wrote. Emery published the Democrat from upper-story offices in a building near the Central-Hammond-State street intersection; hearing about the possible attack, building co-owner J.G. Clark asked “Emery to remove his property.”
Refusing, Emery asked Bangor Mayor Isaiah Stetson to assign police officers to guard the newspaper’s offices. Correctly reading the Queen City’s political mood, Stetson declined the request.
At approximately 12:45 p.m. on Aug. 12, the First Parish Church bell started tolling a fire alarm, “sending fire engines [and on-duty police officers] up State Street,” DiMeglio reported. The false alarm triggered a well-planned attack on the Democrat.
“Led by a husky blacksmith named Tabor, an evidently well-organized group of men forced their way into the office, watched the smith break up the great press, and then tossed whatever they could into” West Market Square “four stories below,” DiMeglio wrote. “The crowd that was gathered there burned everything that would burn.”
Hearing about the vandalism while at lunch, Marcellus Emery “arrived on the scene” and fearlessly “penetrated the mob to his office,” according to DiMeglio. He recognized an off-duty Bangor policeman who was merrily tearing up Democrat property.
With rioters calling for Emery’s death, friends hustled Emery to safety in “a drug store on the corner of Hammond and Central Streets”; he then hid “in the Franklin House on Harlow Street,” DiMeglio wrote.
As the paper’s office was “thoroughly gutted,” one man fought back, DiMeglio noted. Barber Joseph Jones “picked a fight with [local politician] John Wyman,” but Jones “received not only a physical beating from Jones, but had his shop nearly demolished by the mob.”
For defending freedom of the press, a constitutional right, Joseph Jones was also arrested by Bangor police and tossed into jail.
Surreptitiously using a Bangor print shop owned by Samuel Smith, Emery printed a four-page follow-up edition of the Democrat that blasted local politicians for not protecting his property. “Thus hath the freedom of the Press been stricken down here in Maine … through the wicked instigation of a band of abolitionist politicians who would willingly subvert all law and all order for the maintenance of a mere party dogma,” Emery wrote.
He claimed that Bangor legislator William McCrillis and Penobscot County Attorney Charles Crosby had ‘“made inflammatory speeches … to incite a mob” during the Norumbega Hall meeting, according to DiMeglio.
Emery would resume printing the Democrat in January 1863. In that achievement he was fortunate; across the North and the South, local “patriots” often trashed newspapers supporting the wartime opposition. Many newspapers never reopened.
In autumn 1866, Emery sued 14 men for damages totaling $30,000. A civil trial held in Belfast that October saw only two men, Samuel Mann and Tabor (the blacksmith who tore apart Emery’s press) fined $916.66. Ironically, attorney and alleged riot instigator William McCrillis represented Emery.
Emery launched the Bangor Daily Commercial in January 1872. He never abandoned his Democratic roots; Maine voters never forgot his pro-Confederate editorializing. On July 13, 1873, the New York Times reported that “a Democratic paper in Maine suggests Marcellus Emery … for Governor.”
The Times commented that “the Maine Democrat who would vote for him for that office would probably like to vote for Jeff, Davis for Jeff. Davis for President.”
Stricken with cancer, Emery died on Feb. 22, 1879. He lies buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery in Bangor.

In the Aug. 6, 1861 issue of The Democrat, Bangor publisher Marcellus Emery published Jefferson Davis’s report to the Confederate Congress about the Battle of Manassas. The aticle incensed many pro-Union supporters in Bangor and led to a mob sacking Emery’s newspaper office. (Brian Swartz Photo)

 

Marcellus Emery lies buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery, inside the unusually named Baptist Circle. (Brian Swartz Photo)

Brian Swartz can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.

Brian Swartz

About Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News. Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it. Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality. I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.