TELEGRAPHING FOR THE ARMIES
ANDREW CARNEGIE SUPERINTENDED
MILITARY RAILWAYS AND GOVERNMENT
TELEGRAPH LINES IN 1861
ANDREW CARNEGIE
The man who established the Federal military telegraph system amid the first horrors of war was to become one of the world’s foremost advocates of peace. As the right hand man of Thomas A. Scott, Assistant Secretary of War, he came to Washington in ’61, and was immediately put in charge of the field work of reestablishing communication between the Capital and the North, cut off by the Maryland mobs. A telegraph operator himself, he inaugurated the system of cipher despatches for the War Department and secured the trusted operators with whom the service was begun. A young man of twenty-four at the time, he was one of the last to leave the battlefield of Bull Run, and his duties of general superintendence over the network of railroads and telegraph lines made him a witness of war’s cruelties on other fields until he with his chief left the government service June 1, 1862.
THE MILITARY FIELD TELEGRAPH
THE MILITARY TELEGRAPH IN THE FIELD
“No orders ever had to be given to establish the telegraph.” Thus wrote General Grant in his memoirs. “The moment troops were in position to go into camp, the men would put up their wires.” Grant pays a glowing tribute to “the organization and discipline of this body of brave and intelligent men.”