Mobtown Massacre

Book excerpt: 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