Full Answer
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.
As a lawyer working for railroad companies, Lincoln would have been a sender and receiver of telegraph messages. One of the men who would serve as a government telegraph operator during the Civil War, Charles Tinker, had done the same job in civilian life at a hotel in Pekin, Illinois.
Besides having an immediate influence on the actions of the Union Army, the telegrams sent by Lincoln also provide a fascinating record of his wartime leadership. The texts of his telegrams, some of which he wrote out for the transmitting clerks, still exist in the National Archives and have been used by researchers and historians.
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.
While Lincoln was able to communicate fairly quickly with his generals, his use of communication was not always a happy experience. He began to feel that General George McClellan was not always being open and honest with him.
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.
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.
One of his constant complaints about the White House was that job seekers and various political figures wanting favors would descend upon him.
Lincoln was self-educated and always highly inquisitive, and, like many people of his era, he had a keen interest in emerging technology. He followed the news of new inventions. And he was the only American president to obtain a patent, for a device he designed to assist riverboats to cross sandbars.
According to David Homer Bates, Lincoln wrote the original draft of the Emancipation Proclamation at a desk in the telegraph office in 1862. The relatively secluded space gave him solitude to gather his thoughts. He would spend entire afternoons drafting one of the most historic documents of his presidency.
Updated October 01, 2018. President Abraham Lincoln used the telegraph extensively during the Civil War, and was known to spend many hours in a small telegraph office set up in the War Department building near the White House.