There is no doubt that the ideology of the French Revolution, with its aura of success, had a tremendous impact on the constitutional debate in the Ottoman Empire. It left a legacy of the idée-force, especially the trinity of ideals--Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality--which found a strong echo among the various ethnic groups and their presses. The concept of freedom which was the essence of the Revolution became simultaneously one of the most important words in the lexicon of the Revolution and a major source of ambiguity. Defining the concept of freedom, as well as understanding its privileges and limitations, became the main task of the newspapers in their journey to educate and discipline the public. The following paper examines how different ethnic groups in the Empire (Armenians, Jews, and Turks) perceived the ambiguous concept of Freedom. The main concern of the different ethnic presses in Armenian, Ladino, Hebrew, Ottoman Turkish, and Arabic was to prevent lawless behavior by their publics. They were afraid that the gap in political authority created by the Revolution, coupled with the common understanding that citizens were free to do as they saw fit, might lead to an immediate escalation of ethnic tensions. Although most of the ethnic newspapers struggled to define the theme of freedom from different perspectives, they had one thing in common: to educate and discipline the masses in the chaotic situation of the post-Revolutionary period. Some discourses struggled with defining the concept of freedom; others highlighted its uses and abuses, whereas a third group dealt with its legality. All of these indicate that, during the fragile post-Revolutionary period, ethnic groups expressed anxiety about the abuses of freedom not only by their adversaries, but also by members of their own communities. A thorough analysis of the perception of freedom by different ethnic groups helps us understand the uses and abuses of this indispensable concept in post-despotic regimes. Interestingly, we see examples of such abuses prevailing in much of the Middle East today following the collapse of long ruling dictatorial regimes.