Abraham Lincoln: Our First "Wired" President

On this episode of Our American Stories, here’s Christopher Klein with the story of how Abraham Lincoln used the telegraph to help win the Civil War.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to Ouramerican Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites. Christopher Klein is the author
of four books and is a frequent contributor to the
History Channel. You've heard Chris tell the story of how
Johnny Carson saved Twister and how Mark Twain helped Ulysses s.

(00:33):
Grant complete his memoir that saved his wife from destitution.
He's back with another. Here's Christopher Klein with a story
of how Abraham Lincoln used the telegraph to help win
the Civil War.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Nearly one hundred and fifty years before the advent of texts, tweets,
an email, President Abraham Lincoln became the first wired president
by embracing the original electronic messaging technology to telegraph. The
sixteenth resident may be remembered for a soaring oratory that
stirred the Union, but the nearly one thousand byte sized
telegrams that he wrote during his presidency helped win the

(01:09):
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 eighteen forty four.
Prior to the Civil War, federal employees who had to
send a telegram from the nation's capital had to wait
in line with the rest of the public at the
city's central Telegraph office. Days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter,

(01:36):
Andrew Carnegie, the future industrialist who at the time was
superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, sent
the following order to the Railroad Superintendent of Telegraphs, send
four of your best operators to Washington at once, prepared
to enter government telegraph service for war. Those four men
would be the first of the fifteen hundred called into

(01:58):
service in the newly created US Military Telegraph Corps. Using
wire coils borne on the backs of mules, the corps
undertook the dangerous work of crossing battlefields to lay more
than fifteen thousand miles of telegraph wires on poles, fences,
and bushes that allowed news from the front lines to

(02:18):
be transmitted nearly instantaneously to a telegraph office that had
been established inside the old Library of the War Department
building adjacent to the White House. In March eighteen sixty two. Lincoln,
who had a keen interest in technology and remains the
only American president with the patent, spent more of his
presidency in the War Department's Telegraph office than anywhere else

(02:41):
outside of the White House. As a president of crave knowledge,
he tried a well worn path across the Executive Mansions
lawn to the War Department to monitor the latest intelligence
arriving in dots and dashes. David Homer Bates, one of
the four original members of the US Military Telegraph Corps,
recounting in his book Lincoln in the Telegraph Room that

(03:03):
several times a day, the President sat down at a
Telegraph office desk near a window overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue and
read through their fresh stack of incoming telegrams, which he
called lightning messages. As telegraph keys chattered, he peered over
the shoulders of the operators who scribbled down the incoming
messages converted from Morse code. He visited the office nearly

(03:25):
every night before turning in, and slept there on a
cot during pivotal battles. Lincoln, though had not made a
great first impression upon Bates and the other telegraph operators,
he seemed to us uncouth and awkward, and he did
not conform to our ideas of what a president should be.
Bates recalled, but the more time the president spent in

(03:45):
a telegraph office, the more their impressions changed. He would
dare relax from the strain and care ever present at
the White House, and while waiting for fresh dispatches or
while they were being deciphered, would make running comments or
tell his inimitable stories. Bates wrote, I soon forgot his
awkward appearance and came to think of him as a

(04:08):
very attractive and indeed lovable person. Major AE H. Johnson
remembered he came over from the White House several times
a day, and, thrusting his long arm down among the messages,
fished them out one by one and read them. He
had a habit of sitting frequently on the edge of
his chair, with his right knee dragged down to the floor.

(04:31):
Bates also recalled on Lincoln that in the intervals of
waiting he would write messages of inquiry, council, and encouragement
to the generals in the field, to the governors of
the loyal states, and sometimes dispatches announcing pardons or reprieved
to soldiers under sentence of death for desertion or sleeping
on post. Lincoln even communicated by telegraph with his family

(04:55):
when they were away from the nation's capital. One time,
when traveling in New York City, Mary Lincoln wired her
husband asking for fifty dollars and news of their young
son's pet goats at the White House. Lincoln telegram back
tell Tad, the goats and father are very well, especially
the goats. As his family learned, Lincoln would be very

(05:15):
direct in his communications. While generals such as George mccolluan
sent ten page missives, the president replied in three to
four sentences. The telegraph allowed the president to act as
a true commander in chief by issuing commands to his
generals and directing the movement of forces in nearly real time.
For the first time, a national leader to have virtual

(05:38):
battlefront conversations with his military officers. The lack of interstate
telegraph lines in the South precluded Confederate President Jefferson Davis
from doing the same. Lincoln wasn't shy about stepping in
and asserting his thoughts on telegrams that weren't even addressed
to him. When General Ulysses s Grant rejected General and
Henry Halleck's suggestion to remove troops from the siege of Petersburg,

(05:59):
and eighteen sixty four, the President lent this support after
reading their communications. Hold on with a bulldog grip and
chew and choke as much as possible. To Lincoln, the
Telegraph Office was not just the nineteenth century command center,
but a sanctuary from the throngs who descended upon the
White House every day in search of jobs and favors.

(06:22):
I come here to escape my persecutors, Lincoln quipped to
telegraph officer Albert B. Chandler, telling homespun tales and cracking jokes.
The President befriended the officer's telegraph operators. When news A
Grant's capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, arrived by wire in eighteen
sixty three, Lincoln flatted regulations bought beer for the operators,

(06:44):
drinking a sudsy toast with the general's telegram in his hand.
On April eighth, eighteen sixty five, Lincoln himself telegraphed the
office from City Point, Virginia, would news A Grant's capture
of Richmond. A week later, the Telegraph Office broke the
devastation any news of Lincoln's assassination to the nation as
it tapped out the message. As Secretary of War Edwin

(07:05):
Stanton wrote from the President's death bed across the street
from Ford's Theater, Abraham Lincoln died this morning at twenty
two minutes after seven, and.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
A great job as always to Greg Hangler for the
production on the piece, and a special thanks to Christopher Klein.
Abraham Lincoln, the first wired president. Here on our American stories, Folks,
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that

(07:37):
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu

(07:57):
to learn more.