NEAL CONAN, host:

And now the TALK OF THE NATION Opinion Page. As we celebrate Abraham Lincoln's birthday today, it's often his famous writings that come to mind, his house divided speech, the Emancipation Proclamation, and of course the Gettysburg Address, all very carefully planned and presented. But where Lincoln really comes alive, argues Tom Wheeler, is through technology.

In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, he argues that the telegraph was the 19th century version of e-mail and that it gives us an intimate look at the thoughts and feelings of the commander in chief.

Tom Wheeler is the author of "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War." He's president of the Foundation for the National Archives and joins us now by phone from Barcelona in Spain. Nice of you to take time out to speak with us today.

Mr. TOM WHEELER (Author, "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War"): Hello, Neal, how are you?

CONAN: And if any of you have questions about Lincoln's telegrams or what they tell us about him or his presidency, give us a call, 800-989-8255, 800-989-TALK; e-mail us, [email protected].

And Tom, President Lincoln was the first president to use any kind of real-time electronic communications. Were they as off-the-cuff as an e-mail message might be today?

Mr. WHEELER: You're absolutely right, Neal, that he was the first president to have access to a technology that we take for granted. I don't think that he was as off-the-cuff as we are today, and that in itself may be a lesson.

You know, one of the problems we have today is that the way we write e-mails, it's the written equivalent, the electronic equivalent, of casual Friday. But Abraham Lincoln was the first national leader to ever be able to use electronic communications in the course of his job.

And the fascinating thing when we look back on the Lincoln presidency is we say, okay, the marble man that we know is someone from his famous speeches, like you've said, from letters and other writings. But those were all set pieces. Those were all things where he agonized over what he should be saying and how it would be interpreted.

And in the telegrams, we see his off-the-top-of-the-head, spur-of-the-moment, quick responses, and since Lincoln didn't keep a diary or anything like that, it's the closest thing we can get to a transcript of a conversation with Abraham Lincoln.

CONAN: And one of the messages you cite is a message between the president and his wife.

Mr. WHEELER: It was a wonderful thing that - Mary Lincoln used to travel a lot, and in April, 1864, she was in New York City with their 11-year-old son, Tad, and she sent the president a telegram that said: Arrived here safely; hope you are well. And then got down to business: Please send a draft today for $50. And then she gave the delivery instructions.

And then in a run-on at the end of that, she says: Tad asks, are the goats well? Because he was keeping pet goats at the White House. And Abraham Lincoln may have been president of the United States, he may have been in the midst of preparing for Grant's new spring offensive, but he dropped everything. He sent a telegram back that in essence said the check is in the mail. He said a draft will go to you, a check is in the mail. And then he says: Tell Tad the goats and father are very well, dash, especially the goats.

And I just always thought that was a terrific insight into Abraham Lincoln, because there off the top of his head was an expression not only of the pressure that he was under but also how he found refuge in wit.

CONAN: The room where Washington - excuse me, where Lincoln did a lot of his telegraphy, really sort of the modern equivalent of the White House situation room, he would go over there, sometimes at night, and wait for messages to come in from his generals.

Mr. WHEELER: You're absolutely right. And where the old executive office building is today was the War Department, and the telegraph office was in there, and he actually at one point in time had a cot installed in the telegraph office so that he could be close to his messenger, if you will, and when things were really hot out in the various campaigns, he would sleep there.

CONAN: We're speaking with Tom Wheeler, the author of "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War," and the author of an op-ed that appeared in today's Washington Post. If you'd like to read that op-ed, you can go to our Web site at npr.org/talk and also find out how you can download as podcasts our TALK OF THE NATION Opinion Page segment.

If you'd like to join the conversation, give us a call: 800-989-8255, and again e-mail is [email protected]. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And let's get a caller on the line. This is Don with us, Don calling from Cincinnati.

DON (Caller): Hello.

CONAN: Go ahead, Don.

DON: Yeah, I just had a quick question. How did Abe Lincoln back then deal with the notion of spam and foofing(ph). He had to be worried that his message was going out but not necessarily going to the right people or…

CONAN: That it would arrive in the form in which he sent it. Were these coded messages, Tom Wheeler?

Mr. WHEELER: Yes, they were. There was a very sophisticated cipher system that was never broken during the war. But Don raises a very good point, because often Confederate raiders would cut the lines, or they would intercept and put their own telegraph key and sit there and read the messages. But the cipher that the Union had developed was so good that the South would frequently publish the ciphered messages in the newspapers and offer cash rewards if anybody could break them, and they never were broken.

CONAN: Interesting. Thanks for the call, Don.

DON: You're welcome.

CONAN: And most of the messages were, of course, about military affairs, and in your op-ed you cite a couple to his most annoying general, that being General McClellan, one during the Peninsula Campaign, when President Lincoln decided not to be as harsh as he might have been, and one after the Battle of Antietam, where he sort of let his demons go.

Mr. WHEELER: Well, you know, Neal, that's a very interesting story, because George McClellan, who was commanding the largest army ever assembled in the United States, in 1862, was down outside of Richmond, and he sent a telegram to the president of the United States in which he had the temerity to say to him it is the policy and duty of the government to send me all the well-drilled troops available.

McClellan had a huge numerical advantage, but he was forever saying the other guy was bigger and that's why he couldn't attack. And Lincoln gets this - I mean this insulting telegram. He gets it and he sits there and he writes a response, and he responds to some of the other points in it, and then he gets down to this point, and he says - he says that I'll be very sensitive to what is going on, but you have to understand, in essence, he says, that I have to look at the broader scope of things. And then he adds: And last, I must be the judge as to the duty, underlined, of the government.

And then as you look at his handwritten telegram, you can actually see his mind at work, because he scratches through that last line. He scratches through that rebuke, and you can see the struggle going on between Abraham Lincoln's frustration and his saying to himself, is this really the best way to deliver this kind of message?

A couple of years later, McClellan, still in command after the Battle of Antietam that he should have won - he had two to one numerical superiority and he had Robert E. Lee's plans in his hand - the best he got there was a draw, and then for five weeks he did nothing. He didn't pursue Lee. He didn't do anything. And when Lincoln saw that - a telegram coming in to another general in which McClellan complained of sore-tongued and fatigued horses that were keeping his army from moving, Lincoln snapped, and he sat down and he dashed off a telegram to McClellan, saying: Will you pardon me for asking, what have the horses of your army done since the Battle of Antietam that would fatigue anything?

CONAN: And of course, McClellan would find himself out of work a couple of weeks later, when the commander in chief decided he needed a new general.

Mr. WHEELER: You're exactly right. And so what that little what have they done to fatigue anything outburst of Lincoln's is also an insight into the fact that clearly he was already over the precipice and he was saying this guy's got to go.

CONAN: And as you note, very different kinds of messages to his commanding general when he got one who would actually fight. This to General Grant: Hold on with a bulldog grip and chew and choke as much as possible.

Mr. WHEELER: And the great thing about that telegram is that when Grant received it, he was handed it by his telegraph clerk, and he started chuckling as he read it, and he turned to those around him and he said the president has more nerve than any of his advisors. And that was the truth. He did. But the interesting thing here is that he was using this new electronic technology that no other leader in history had ever been able to use and that he had to invent how to use himself in order to reach out and deliver that kind of message to a general in the field.

CONAN: Tom Wheeler, thanks very much.

Mr. WHEELER: Thank you, Neal.

CONAN: Tom Wheeler is the author of "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War." You can read his op-ed and download our Opinion Page podcast at our Web site. It's at npr.org/talk. And this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

Copyright © 2007 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

How the Telegraph Helped Lincoln Win the Civil War

Mr. Wheeler is the author of Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War (HarperCollins, 2006)

“What became of our forces which held the bridge till twenty minutes ago…? The President of the United States telegraphed a colonel in the field during the Civil War Battle of Second Manassas (Bull Run) in 1862. Abraham Lincoln was using the new medium of electronic communications in an unprecedented manner to revolutionize the nature of national leadership.

When Lincoln arrived for his inauguration in 1861 there was not even a telegraph line to the War Department, much less the White House. Storm clouds were brewing, but when the US Army wanted to send a telegram they did like everyone else: sending a clerk with a hand written message to stand in line at Washington’s central telegraph office. That unwieldy situation changed rapidly, however, as wires were strung to the War Department and other key installations. The White House, however, remained without any outside connection. 

Four months into his presidency Lincoln sat with his generals and waited while the thunder of cannon could be heard from the battlefield at Manassas, just 30 miles outside the capital. Their lack of activity was almost surreal. The General-in-Chief, Winfield Scott, was so accepting of the tradition of being unable to communicate rapidly with the front that he took a nap during the battle. The president found it necessary to awaken his top commander as the battle raged.

A young Pennsylvania Railroad supervisor named Andrew Carnegie had been given the responsibility of extending a telegraph line into Northern Virginia. The task was incomplete by the time the two armies clashed; the line stopped ten miles short of the battlefield. In a hybrid of the old and new, messengers from the field galloped to the end of the telegraph line. “Lincoln hardly left his seat in our office and waited with deep anxiety for each succeeding despatch [sic],” recorded the manager of the War Department’s new telegraph office.

The telegraph was beginning to change the executive’s relationship with his forces in the field. While General Scott napped, the new president consumed the electronically delivered updates. Thirteen months later, when the armies battled again along Bull Run, it was a different story in the telegraph office. No longer was Lincoln content to sit idly by and await information, he was actively in communication with the front.

During Second Manassas (Bull Run) the Confederates cut the telegraph connections with Washington. Unable to communicate with his key generals, Lincoln opened a telegraphic dialog with a subordinate officer that continued for several days. The telegrams between the president and Colonel Herman Haupt were at one point the national leadership’s best source of information. The telegraph office became, as Eliot Cohen identified, the first White House Situation Room where the president could be in almost real time communication with his forces while at the same time participating in strategic discussions with his advisors.

Throughout the entire history of armed conflict, the ability to have a virtually instantaneous exchange between a national leader at the seat of government and his forces in the field had been impossible. As a result, field commanders had been the closest things to living gods. Cut off from the national leadership, the unilateral decisions of the generals determined not only the fate of individuals’ lives, but also the future of nations. It was for this reason that heads of government, such as Henry V at Agincourt or Bonaparte in Russia, had remained with their troops to combine both national and military leadership.

The American democratic experiment was different, however. American wars had always been fought with the head of government removed from the scene of battle. When General Scott decided to march on Mexico City in 1847, for instance, the nation’s leaders learned of the attack days after the event.

Had the traditional model of generals divorced from speedy interaction with the national leadership persisted during the Civil War the results could have been quite different. Lincoln used the telegraph to put starch in the spine of his often all too timid generals and to propel his leadership vision to the front. Most importantly, he used the telegraph as an information gathering tool to understand what was going on in the headquarters of his military leadership.

When General Joseph Hooker floated a trial balloon at the start of the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863, Lincoln used the telegraph to reinforce his strategic redirection away from the acquisition of real estate to the destruction of the enemy. Hooker saw the Confederates’ move north as an opportunity to move against their capital. Lincoln responded succinctly, reminding Hooker of his objective, “If left to me, I would not go South of the Rappahannock, upon Lee’s moving North of it…I think Lee’s army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point.” Of course couriers could have carried these messages back and forth, but the immediacy of electronic messages put the president in his general’s tent, capable of a rapid-fire back-and-forth exchange almost as if he were physically present.

The year before his exchange with Hooker, during Confederate General Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Lincoln had done more than simply counsel on strategy; he used the telegraph to take command. As Jackson threatened Washington, the president telegraphed direct orders to generals in the field, moving men around as though on a chessboard. That the orders did not produce the desired result is more of a reflection on their poor implementation than on the president’s strategy and tactics.

When Lincoln and the nation finally found the general they deserved in Ulysses Grant the president continued to evolve his use of electronic messages. The wire became a way for the president to stay informed and assert himself.

After reading a message from Grant to Chief-of-Staff Halleck which fretted that quelling the draft riots of 1864 might deplete the force at the front and thus affect his operations, Lincoln intervened directly. “Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke, as much as possible” he wired Grant. It was as good as walking into Grant’s headquarters, sizing up the general’s state of mind, and responding through conversation. As he put down the president’s telegram, Grant laughed out loud and exclaimed to those around him, “The President has more nerve than any of his advisers.” Grant was, of course, correct in his observation. More important, however, he had just held in his hands the tool Lincoln used for reinforcing his resolve and making sure that neither distance nor intermediaries diffused his leadership.

The slightly fewer than 1000 telegrams Abraham Lincoln sent during his presidency also provide us with an insight that his other writings cannot. Because Lincoln kept no diary we must rely on his correspondence and speeches for insights into the workings of his mind and the nature of his interactions with others. In this regard, however, Lincoln’s telegrams can be the next best thing to a transcript. Whereas Lincoln’s letters were well thought out précis designed to stand on their own, many of his telegrams are spontaneous responses to a specific stimulus. Thus they constitute the closest we will ever get to a tape recording of Lincoln’s interaction with his generals. Read in tandem with the messages he received, these telegrams are like eavesdropping on a conversation with Abraham Lincoln.

The story of Abraham Lincoln and the telegraph is perhaps the greatest untold story about this great man. Through these messages it is possible to watch Lincoln’s confidence grow and in turn to observe his growth as a leader. 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.

     ©2006 Tom Wheeler

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Short conversation - Weekend - Kommersant

On November 13, 1851, a telegraph service between Moscow and St. Petersburg started working - a cable between the two Russian capitals was laid along with the railway. A few weeks earlier, a telegraph line linked Paris and London. The telegraph has radically changed communication, making it not only faster, but also more concise. Ulyana Volokhova studied how people mastered the art of conciseness and whether they were good at it. nine0005

He is Kawara. From the series "I'm still alive", "Telegram to Matsu B.", 1979

Photo: ON KAWARA

He is Kawara. From the series "I'm still alive", "Telegram to Matsu B.", 1979

Photo: ON KAWARA

“Wonderful are thy works, O Lord”

This is how the first telegraph message in history looked like. Samuel Morse sent it on May 24, 1844, over the then only telegraph cable in the world from Washington to Baltimore. It was sent using a device developed by Morse and a special coding system in which letters were replaced by combinations of long and short signals. The words "Wonderful are thy works, Lord" - a quote from the "Book of Numbers", which was suggested to Morse by the daughter of his friend, who believed that they best convey the delight before the revolutionary event. nine0005

"?"

Such a telegram in 1862, according to legend, came from Victor Hugo to the publisher Albert Lacroix. Due to speeches against Napoleon III, the writer was in voluntary exile on the island of Guernsey and could not himself observe the reaction to the publication of the novel Les Misérables. The response telegram from the publisher was also short: “!”

"Grab a bulldog grip, chew and hit as hard as you can"

Abraham Lincoln sent this telegram on August 17, 1864 to General Grant, who was besieging the city of Petersburg. The siege had been going on for almost two months, and the day before, the northerners had suffered an unpleasant defeat in another battle. Nevertheless, Grant cabled Lincoln that he thought it necessary to hold the line, and Lincoln agreed with him. Petersburg was captured only nine months later. With its fall, the American Civil War also ended. nine0005

“I offer my deepest gratitude”

This is how the King of German-occupied Denmark Christian X replied to Hitler on September 26, 1942, when he received a congratulatory telegram from him “I send my sincere congratulations on your birthday. ” Having received the telegram, Hitler was so offended by its brevity that he immediately expelled the Danish ambassador from Berlin and recalled the German ambassador from Copenhagen. The “Telegram Crisis” put an end to the soft occupation of Denmark: SS Werner Best was sent to the country as a manager, who formed a new collaborationist government, liquidated the remnants of the national fleet and launched repressions in the country. nine0005

"It's a boy"

On November 1, 1952, the first ever test of a thermonuclear weapon took place on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Edward Teller, who was at the University of Berkeley, picked up the vibrations from the shock wave with a seismograph and sent a message "It's a boy" to the Los Alamos laboratory. This meant that the tests were successful and another weapon of mass destruction appeared in the world. The telegram from Teller, who acted as the inspirer and consultant of the project, arrived at the laboratory two hours earlier than the official confirmation. Twenty years later, Teller admitted to reporters that if the tests were unsuccessful and the power of the blast wave was weak, he would have sent the telegram "It's a girl." nine0005

“I am still alive”

In December 1969, conceptual artist On Kawara sent three telegrams to the exhibition curator in Paris: “I am not going to commit suicide”, “Don’t worry, I have no suicidal intentions” and “I I'm going to bed, forget about it." These three messages were the beginning of a huge cycle. On Kawara did not appear in public and did not give comments or interviews, but from 1969 until the early 2000s he sent a telegram "I'm still alive" to anyone who was interested in his person. Also, such messages were sometimes spontaneously received by his friends and just acquaintances in different parts of the world. More than 9 are now known00 telegrams of the artist.

Nurse not blown up

In 1935, Evelyn Waugh, who went to Abyssinia as a correspondent for the Daily Mail to cover the Italo-Ethiopian war, was commissioned by the editors to write a story about the life of an American nurse killed in the bombing of the city of Adua. Her heroic death was reported in the newspapers, and the Daily Mail hoped to be the first to tell about it in detail. After talking with eyewitnesses of the events, Evelyn Waugh found out that both the nurse and her death were a fabrication of the press, so instead of a heartbreaking article, he sent a short telegram to the editor: “The nurse is not blown up.” nine0005

“I watch your game from the last row. It's a pity you're not here.”

Playwright and Broadway director George Kaufman sent such a telegram during the intermission of the musical I'm Singing About You to the leading actor William Haxton. Kaufman hated it when the actors overacted, and Gaxton, the vaudeville star, became more melodramatic with each performance. Haxton understood the meaning of the message correctly and, after the intermission, reduced the pathos.

"Be healthy, schoolboy"

Sergei Dovlatov claimed that in 1974 he congratulated Bulat Okudzhava on his 50th birthday with such a telegram. In the USSR, he was not honored for political reasons, and Dovlatov decided to support the poet, whom he did not even know. "Be healthy, schoolboy" was the title of Okudzhava's first story, published in 1961. Dovlatov said that a year after sending the telegram, he met Okudzhava and asked him if he appreciated the congratulations. Okudzhava replied that on his birthday he received about a hundred telegrams and 85 of them contained the words "Be healthy, schoolboy." nine0005

“Welcome to the start of a great career. Send text”

On October 7, 1955, publisher and bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti came across a reading of Allen Ginsberg's poem “Scream”. The furious text about the life of drug addicts, homosexuals and lunatics made Ferlinghetti so enthusiastic that he wanted to publish a poem. He was not familiar with Ginsberg and, in order to appear in a favorable light, sent him a telegram: “Greetings to you at the beginning of a great career. Submit text. In exactly the same words, 100 years earlier, the poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson hailed the literary debut of Walt Whitman, the idol of the beat generation in general and Ginsberg in particular. Ginsberg did not consider the allusion, but sent the manuscript. nine0005

Is the current USA the result of cooperation between Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln?

Material information

Published: 20 July 2016

Views: 24548

The American Civil War ended with the victory of the North American United States in 1865. This accelerated the development of industry, agriculture and the domestic market in the country. nine0005

And it would be useful to recall that the victory of the North was ensured by the Russian Empire, in particular the Russian fleet. What lay at the foundation of the rapprochement between Russia and the United States: foreign policy interests or personal relations between Abraham Lincoln and Alexander II?

Definitely, the 1860s can be called the period of rapprochement and friendly policy between the USA and Russia. At this time, the government of the northerners needed military assistance. And she received it, in the form of the Baltic squadron of Rear Admiral S. S. Lesovsky and the Pacific squadron of Rear Admiral A.A. Popov. Russian sailors were based in New York and San Francisco in order to counter the British fleet. This was the main reason that England and France were unable to provide military support to the Confederation from the sea. nine0005

In 1856 the Crimean War ended, the main players of which were Great Britain, Russia, France and the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, Nicholas I, and then Alexander II, could not achieve their goals. As a result, the participation of the Russian Empire in the "Great Game" led to the breakdown of the domestic financial system. Anti-Russian sentiments intensified in France and Great Britain. And in 1863, a Polish uprising broke out, which was openly supported by Napoleon III and other European rulers. nine0005

In 1863, the Civil War engulfed many cities in the North American United States. Although the southerners lagged behind the northerners economically, they nevertheless won the war. A confederation of the rebellious states of the south was openly supported by Britain and France. Why? European leaders feared the strengthening of industrial competition, they were more satisfied with the backward states of the south, where the cheap plantation labor of Negro slaves prevailed.

In 1862, two squadrons of Russian cruisers were transferred to the ports of San Francisco and New York. And in the event of open support by Great Britain of the southern states, Russia would immediately strike at the British fleet and block British maritime trade. As a result, there was no open support from Great Britain and France, the course of the war turned in favor of the north, and soon the war ended. Why did we help the USA? Open request or personal relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Alexander II? Rather, the situation itself: the presence of a common enemy and mutual understanding between the leaders of the United States and the Russian Empire. Although until recently, the correspondence between Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln was published, which confirms the warm personal relationship between the two rulers. In any case, this topic can be the subject of a detailed study. nine0005

American historians and contemporaries often drew parallels between Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln and called their fates similar: a common enemy, both reformers, assassination attempts, similar fates, in reality they were united by a skillful, forced liberation of peasants and slaves, liberation by necessity and not to end.

It is interesting that, ascending the throne in 1855, Alexander II said that “it is better to free the peasants from above than they themselves will do it from below”, as a result, it took considerable time for this decision to be made. Only in 1861 the peasants were freed: they ceased to be serfs and began to be considered "temporarily liable". Many historians call the reform of Alexander II half-hearted, pointing out that it only determined the mechanism of redemption, instead of the complete liberation of the peasants. nine0005

In turn, Abraham Lincoln was remembered by everyone as the liberator of slaves in the United States.

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