ABSTRACT
During the civil war, union officers and officials sent 6.5 million telegrams. This is why cutting he telegraph lines was such a problem and a strategy of war—if the officers cut the lines, communication stopped. Secretary of war stanton realized that confederate and union officers were sending vast amounts of information across the telegraph lines. Information about troop movements or shipments could be coded, but those codes could also be broken. Many of them were family or business communications, but there was also information from confederate generals, information of arms shipments, reports from confederate field officers, and calls for assistance. Lincoln became a regular visitor to the war office, dropping by nearly every afternoon to see what Stanton’s men had discovered. With the aid of the telegraph information, Lincoln and the union generals were able to make battle plans that eventually helped the North win the war. And it was all because of Lincoln’s secret weapon, the telegraph.
