After the first-graders were slaughtered, after the Congresswoman was shot in her forehead at

[Journeyman]

12. Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner were censored when they took pictures . . .

of Civil War battlefields.

It was felt that exposure to too many of the war's horrors might turn public opinion even more against the conflict than it was for so much of the war.

Not hard to imagine, especially when you consider thow horrid some of those battles were, far more atrocious than modern battlefields. Imagine: Pictures of the carnage at Spotsylvania, when thousands of men battled hand-to-hand across a wooden barrier for 18 hours in a driving rainstorm -- such images would have surely turned opinions, even though they were grainy black and white. It was a well considered censorship that stifled those images. There was a lot at stake in 1864. But we're not fighting a civil war today; we are however in a battle for our nation every bit as desperate.