Two New York City newspapers, the New…

Two New York City newspapers, the New York World and the New York Journal of Commerce, publish a story on May 18, 1864, that President Abraham Lincoln had issued a proclamation of conscription of four hundred thousand more men into the Union army.

As there are fierce battles taking place between Union and Confederate troops in Virginia, the Northern public takes it to mean that the war is not going well for the Union.

Share prices fall on the New York Stock Exchange when investors begin to buy gold, and its value increases ten percent.

During the day, a number of people—one of them former Union commander General George B. McClellan—become suspicious of the fact that the proclamation had been published in just two newspapers, and go to the offices of the Journal to determine the source.

Editors of the paper show them an Associated Press dispatch they had received early in the morning.

Before noon, the Associated Press issues a statement that the dispatch had not come from them, and at 12.30 p.m. the State Department in Washington DC sends a telegram to verify that the proclamation is "an absolute forgery".

By now, however, the stock market has already been affected.

Further investigation reveals that the dispatches had been delivered by a young courier just after the night editors had gone home.

The timing had been perfect: the night foreman had had to make a decision as to whether to include the proclamation in the next day's paper or not.

Night foremen in various other newspapers had tried to verify the message, and when they found out that not every paper had received the message, they decided to delay it pending further proof.

Only foremen for the World and Journal of Commerce had added it.

President Lincoln is enraged when he hears about the case: he gives an order to close the two papers down and has their editors arrested for suspicion of complicity.

Soldiers seize the two offices and, for some reason, the office of the Independent Telegraph Line.

Lincoln eventually has the editors released.