Tribune announced editorially that it was prepared for any en-
counter and warned rioters of what would follow in an attack
upon its building. Greeley always insisted that the attack on
The Tribune building was the turning-point in the war and
boldly asserted that if the raid had not been successfully re-
sisted it would have swept all over the North and broken the
Union into fragments.
During this same terrible riot week of July, 1863, proprietors of The Times in New York adopted strenuous measures that its plant might be in a prepared state for defense. They put a revolving cannon in the publication office and laid in a store of rifles with which to ward off any invasion by the mob. Thus defended, The Times did not hesitate to send out red-hot shots in its editorial columns headed, "Crush the Mob." It turned its editorial guns not only on the mob, but also on the other New York newspapers which sought to characterize the riots as "re- bukes of the laboring men." "These are libels," said The Times, "that ought to have paralyzed the fingers that penned them." The conclusion of the editorial was, "Give them grape, and plenty of it." Because of its determined stand on the matter of the riot, The Times also came to be somewhat severely criticized.
GENERALS VS. CORRESPONDENTS
General McClellan on August 5, 1861, invited the war cor- respondents to meet him for consultation about handling war news. At this meeting a resolution was passed, requesting the Government "to afford the representatives of the press facilities for obtaining and immediately transmitting all information suit- able for publication, particularly as touching engagements with the enemy." But correspondents in their desire to be first with the news were so careless at first that the Union generals found it necessary to place numerous restrictions upon publishing mili- tary intelligence. General Rosecrans complained that the army in occupation of Western Virginia was handicapped by having the strength and movements of his troops made public in the press so that all advantages of secrecy of concentration and surprise failed at critical moments. In contrast, he said, the newspapers of the South never betrayed the movements of the
