This Hot Lead Type Headlined The New York Times
The ghastly shootings in Las Vegas have driven New York Times columnist Bret Stephens to op-ed overkill in calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment of the Constitution:"The idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious," he writes. "The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners' rebellion of 1921, the Brink's robbery of 1981—does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?"
While Stephens freedom of opinion is guaranteed by the First Amendment, he has no right to rewrite the Times own history. A century and a half ago, the paper reported on the Civil War Draft Riots raging on its doorstep even as the none too distant thunder of Confederate guns was heard in Washington D.C.
Reader response to the Times Editorial Page peaked in 1864, when a gun-toting mob set out to lynch the Editor, for a reason some present subscribers might approbate: Henry J. Raymond was Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
It did not signify that the Times supported Abe Lincoln. What made the mob howl was bloodthirsty editorials by competitors like Horace Greeley of The New Yorker. But when armed thugs marched up Broadway to sack the New-York Times offices, they found the Editor waiting for them.
Having stood beside Yankee General McClellan on the battlefields of Virginia, Henry Raymond was quite prepared to defend the freedom of the press in New York.
New-York Times Editor Raymond put himself on the firing line by deploying a brace of Gatling guns, one in the newsroom window, and another in the front entrance, " commanding Park Row to the north," and the fully automatic weapons' debut well and truly detered the gangs of New York.
When Raymond died in 1867, the paper went to press "in full mourning" with a front page edged in black. It is sad to see a newsroom where the Second Amendment insured the defense of the First in 1864 plead the Fifth when called upon to remember its own history.
