The city’s newspapers, like those of Boston and all New England, were controlled and edited by military censors. They were permitted to tell their readers nothing of importance. This utter ignorance in which the multitudes were kept, made them more helpless than did even the guns that watched them everywhere. It was a city surrounded, perpetually confronted and oppressed by the unknown. The veil of secrecy and silence was lifted only when newspapers or placards printed some new proclamation in formal, legal verbiage. The first one to be issued had proclaimed the occupation, and the institution of a Military Government. It had added that the existing civil authorities had been empowered and ordered to continue their administration with the sanction and participation of the Military Government, and that all civil and criminal laws remained in effect subject to changes demanded by military exigency.[153] But immediately under this announcement was a paragraph headed: LAWS SUSPENDED On and after this date the following Classes of Laws are Suspended. (1) The Right to Bear Arms. (2) The Right of Suffrage. (3) The Right of Assemblage. (4) The Right to Publish Newspapers or Circulate Other Matter. (5) The Right to Quit Occupied Territory or Travel Freely in same.[154] Another announcement that struck home after the people saw its real meaning under its smooth wording was: “The municipal and other civil and criminal laws as administered by the civil authorities, are for the benefit and protection of the civilian population. Their continued enforcement is not for the protection or control of officers and soldiers of the Occupying Army, who are subject to the Rules of War, and amenable only to their own Military Government.”[155] At first this announcement seemed to the citizens to be for their protection, but the sharper readers soon pointed out that it was only a skillful way of intimating that the soldiers were above all the laws that controlled the conquered population. _A Mysterious Flotilla_ A few days after the surrender, people along the water-front noticed a great movement of vessels. The big Fall River Line and other Sound steamers moved down the Upper Bay in long procession, with some steamships seized at the wharves. They were full of troops. Some of the vessels towed railroad floats with flat cars on which were lashed cannon so big that even from the shore the eye could perceive their unusual size. Other craft towed strings of small scows, and still others towed floating derricks. The flotilla passed down the Upper Bay, but it did not go out through the Narrows. It disappeared in the narrow water-way of the Kill von Kull that winds between Staten Island and the mainland of New Jersey, and connects with the Lower Harbor through Raritan Bay.