H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) lived his whole life in Baltimore, and as a newspaperman he was primarily associated with the Baltimore
Sun. His columns reached a national audience through syndication, making him a well-known critic of war fever, every president from “Roosevelt I” to “Roosevelt II, ” censorship, the Ku Klux Klan and rampant lynching in the South, Prohibition, and the residual Puritanism which, in his definition, underlay most of America’s problems.  He directed his writing to what he called the “civilized minority.”