MAKING HISTORY COME ALIVE NEWSLETTER OFFERS HOW LINCOLN WON THE WAR USING THE TELEGRAPH SYSTEM

When I was developing the article on the last 30 Minutes of the sinking of the Titanic, I became very intrigued with Samuel's Morse invention of the telegraph system and its use during this horrible time.

What was the first telegraph message? Sent by inventor Samuel F.B. Morse on May 24, 1844, over an experimental line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, the message said: "What hath God wrought?" Taken from the Bible, Numbers 23:23, and recorded on a paper tape, the phrase had been suggested to Morse by Annie Ellsworth, the young daughter of a friend. The success of the experiment would change forever the national communication system. He sent messages over the electromagnetic device in a code comprising short and long bursts of electricity bearing Morse’s name. Suddenly people could communicate in an instant over long distances. No other instrument quite shrank the world so dramatically. For this, and some other new technologies, the American Civil War has been called the first modern war.

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Nearly 150 years before the advent of texts, tweets and e-mail, President Abraham Lincoln became the first “wired president” by embracing the original electronic messaging technology—the telegraph. The 16th president may be remembered for his soaring oratory that stirred the Union, but the nearly 1,000 bite-sized telegrams that he wrote during his presidency helped win the Civil War by projecting presidential power in unprecedented fashion.

The federal government had been slow to adopt the telegraph after Samuel Morse’s first successful test message in 1844. Prior to the Civil War, federal employees who had to send a telegram from the nation’s capital needed to wait in line with the rest of the public at the city’s central telegraph office. After the war’s outbreak, the newly created U.S. Military Telegraph Corps undertook the dangerous work of laying more than 15,000 miles of telegraph wire across battlefields that transmitted news nearly instantaneously from the front lines to a telegraph office that had been established inside the old library of the War Department building adjacent to the White House in March 1862.

The Civil War was the first conflict to see the telegraph used for military purposes. It was an important key to Northern victory. The significance of the telegraph for Northern victory is best captured by an accounting of its use. From May 1, 1861, to June 30, 1865, the United States Military Telegraph (USMT) handled some 6.5 million messages at a total cost (for construction, repair, and operation of the network) of $2,655,000, or about forty-one cents per message. During the war the USMT built 15,000 miles of line, often in adverse conditions and sometimes under enemy fire. At its peak in 1865, the USMT network consisted of over 8,000 miles of military telegraph lines and another 5,000 miles of commercial lines operated by military telegraphers. Of the 1,200 operators and linemen who served in the USMT, 175 were wounded or captured and 25 died in service, 8 by direct enemy action.

The Military Telegraph System

Four telegraph operators were recruited for government service in late April 1861, soon after the attack on Fort Sumter. The men had been employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and were enlisted because Andrew Carnegie, the future industrialist, was an executive of the railroad who had been pressed into government service and ordered to create a military telegraph network.

One of the young telegraph operators, David Homer Bates, wrote a fascinating memoir, Lincoln In the Telegraph Office, decades later.

The military telegraph proved valuable on several occasions as an operational and tactical tool on the battlefield, allowing commanders to remain in constant touch with subordinates and to react quickly to changing conditions. McClellan adroitly used the telegraph to resupply his troops with bullets and shells in the midst of the Battle of Antietam, Maryland, in September 1862. Assistant Secretary of War Charles Anderson Dana later praised the utility of the telegraph when he witnessed Union forces in action during the Battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia on September 19, 1863, noting that “it was one of the most useful accessories of our army,” giving General Rosecrans “constant information on the way the battle was going.” Also, Dana was also able to send eleven telegrams to Washington, apprising Stanton of the progress of the battle on almost an hourly basis.

Lincoln In the Telegraph Office

For the first year of the Civil War, Lincoln was barely involved with the military's telegraph office. But in the late spring of 1862 he began to use the telegraph to give orders to his officers. The Army of the Potomac was becoming bogged down during General George McClellan's Peninsula Campaign in Virginia, Lincoln's frustration with his commander may have moved him to establish faster communication with the front.

During the summer of 1862 Lincoln took up the habit he followed for the rest of the war: he would often visit the War Department telegraph office, spending long hours sending dispatches and waiting for responses.

Lincoln developed a warm rapport with the young telegraph operators. And he found the telegraph office a useful retreat from the much busier White House. One of his constant complaints about the White House was that job seekers and various political figures wanting favors would descend upon him. In the telegraph office he could hide away and concentrate on the serious business of conducting the war. As the telegraph office manager, David Homer Bates, wrote in a memoir, "Lincoln spent more of his waking hours in the War Department telegraph office than in any other place, except the White House." Sometimes, in critical situations, Lincoln — customarily clad in a wool shawl over his suit — would spend the entire night at the office, which was in a second-floor library that also contained shelves full of rare books, including a folio copy of Audubon's Birds of America. He spent the time in the company of Bates and various members of his team of three operators: Thomas T. Eckert, Charles A. Tinker, and Albert B. Chandler. According to Bates, the office provided Lincoln with a refuge from all the responsibilities that weighed upon him. Sometimes, Bates recalled, the President would drop in and jokingly explain that he was trying "to get rid of the pestering crowd of office-seekers."

At first, Lincoln’s telegraphs were few. In the last six months of 1861, Lincoln sent only thirteen telegrams. Despite this infrequency, the President exhibited no qualms about using the telegraph to “issue instructions regarding the disposition of troops. “In these early telegraphs, Lincoln began exercising the authority of the commander-in-chief in a direct way. In one telegraph to John C. Fremont, the President ordered the General to begin deploying his troops in Kentucky. Lincoln even went so far as to countermand Fremont’s own dispensation of his troops. These first forays in taking direct command of Union troops were on a “glimmer of what was to happen.” By 1862, the president had begun using the telegraph as means of directly communicating with commanders in the field without the filter of their commanding general. Part of this direct action by Lincoln was brought about by his frustration with General George B. McClellan’s hesitancy to engage the enemy.

Used his newfangled communications tool not just to gather information, but to give orders and "put starch in the spine of his often all-too-timid generals, and to propel his leadership vision to the front," Wheeler writes. During the battle of Gettysburg, for example, Lincoln used telegraph messages to make sure that Gen. Joseph Hooker, who wanted to seize upon the Confederate advance to strike against Richmond, hewed instead to Lincoln's strategic goal of destroying the Confederate army. "I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point,” Lincoln reminded his general, in an exchange of messages whose rapid-fire speed conveyed as much authority as if Lincoln had been in Hooker's tent.

The President traveled to the front lines of McClellan’s Peninsular campaign to see the work firsthand. Upon arrival, Lincoln discovered that although the Union occupied Fort Monroe, the General had done nothing to silence the Confederate ironclad the Merrimac, or its base of operations at Norfolk, both of which resided just across the waters of Hampton Roads. Furious with McClellan’s complacency, the President took it upon himself to capture Norfolk and began “directing the movements” from his mobile White House at Fort Monroe.

Having taken action and tasted the fruits of his decisiveness, Lincoln thereafter began issuing “explicit and direct command to his generals” through the telegraph network. His deepening involvement with the intricacies of the war led Lincoln to practically live in the telegraph office, going so far as to request a cot be set up in that room so that he could remain in proximity to the wires rather than return to the White House. The cipher and telegraph officers of the War Department on whom Lincoln relied on said of the President that the “Commander-in-Chief…possessed an almost intuitive perception of the practical requirements of that…. office, and…was performing the duties of that position in the most intelligent and effective manner.” All of the “intuitive perception” in the world would have been useless however, had it not been for the amazing power of the telegraph.

The telegraph was an important part of Civil War military and political history for two major reasons. Most visibly, the telegraph proved its value as a tactical, operational, and strategic communication medium. For the first time in the history of warfare, the telegraph helped field commanders to direct real-time battlefield operations and permitted senior military officials to coordinate strategy across large distances. These capabilities were key factors in the North's victory. Another important function was to safeguard civilian control over military operations. The staff of the military telegraph network reported directly to Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton and President Abraham Lincoln, rather than to the military command structure. Stanton relied on the military telegraph to monitor the actions of generals in the field, and Lincoln spent countless hours in the War Department telegraph office adjoining Stanton’s office.

Description of Messages

President Lincoln received an invitation from U.S. Grant on March 20, 1865, to visit him in City Point, Virginia. Initially the USS Bat was to be used by him, but since Mary Lincoln and a few others decided to accompany him, the River Queenconveyed the party instead. The Bat went along as protection. This culminated in historic meetings with Grant, Sherman, Admiral Porter, Secretary Stanton, and others. Lincoln and his son Tad visited Richmond on April 4and Lincoln and the party returned on board the River Queento Washington on April 9 – while Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.

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Fox, Gustavus V. Manuscript Telegram, signed “G. V. Fox” as Ast. Sec’y of Navy. Telegram / Navy Department / Washington: 22 March 1865 / 10:30 A.M. 4to.; 1p. To: “Commo. J. B. Montgomery / Comdt. Navy Yard / Washington, D.C.” In full: “Have the Bat ready to convoy the “River Queen” to-morrow noon. The President will be in the “River Queen” bound to City Point / By order of Sec’y of Navy.” This is marked “Recd 10:35 am / sent 11:15 am by K.” with the overlay of an official oval stamping (why the 40-minute delay in sending the telegram is unknown).

Fox, Gustavus V. Manuscript Telegram, signed “G. V. Fox” as Ast Sec’y of Navy. Telegram / Navy Department / Washington: 23 March 1865. 4to.; 1p. In full, with Fox’s own annotations in italics: “The ‘River Queen’ leaves the 6th Streetwharf about 1 P.M. with the President(.) Have the ‘Bat’ [crossed out] accompany her. to City Point and back. / By order Secy Navy.” Marked “Recd 10:05 am / Sent 10:20 am by L”

Construction of Telegraph Lines

Men and equipment of the U.S. Military Telegraph Construction Corps, Brandy Station, Va., February 1864.

The Telegraph Construction Corps were charged with the dangerous job of building telegraph lines in the field during battles. Consisting of about one hundred fifty men, the Telegraph Construction Corps set out in wagon trains to construct temporary lines. During a battle, one wagon was stationed at the starting point of the battle to act as a receiving station, while another wagon traveled into the field to be a sending station. Thus, the orders could be sent back and forth between general headquarters and the battlefield, and what occurred during the battles could be sent back to the Military Telegraph Office in Washington, D.C.

Initially these telegraph lines were only constructed for temporary use because of the brittle exposed copper wire that was used. But, after insulated wire began to be used, permanent lines were built. The Telegraph Construction Corps would load a coil of this wire on a mule's back and lead it straight forward to unreel the wire. As the mule moved forward unwinding the wire, two men followed and hung the line on fences and bushes so that it would not be run over until it was propped up with pikes. Because these lines were so vulnerable to Confederate wiretapping and cutting, cavalry patrols kept guard of the wires when they were being built in an area lacking in Union soldiers. Over the course of the war, the Telegraph Construction Corps built a total of 15,389 miles of field, land, and submarine telegraph lines.

Conclusion

Abraham Lincoln was able to communicate with his officers through the telegraph system watching watching his growth, determination and confidence. What is most remarkable, however, is that Abraham Lincoln applied the new telegraph technology in an absence of precedent. Without the guidance of text, tutor, or training Lincoln instinctively discerned the transformational nature of the new technology and applied its dots and dashes as an essential tool for winning the Civil War