reached him, for he knew they were intended to benefit his country. Previous to the forgery just described, Stanton conceived and had begun to put forth a "war diary" as an effective means of destroying the power of conscienceless newspapers and correspondents. Although already worn nearly to prostration by the multiplicity and weight of his burdens, he undertook the new duty of summarizing each day's military events and movements throughout the country and giving that summary over his own signature to the press before retiring for the night. These bulletins or gazettes, dated variously between 8 P. M. and 2 A. M., are models of compactness, completeness, and clearness. The marches, sorties, battles, losses, captures, conditions, and achievements of every command in the army were set forth with forceful brevity, so that each morning the eager masses were treated to a vivid panorama of the vast field of national strife that, but an hour before, had been painted and signed by the chief artist, the Secretary of War himself. Frequently these descriptions were of considerable length and eloquence. When he was returning by sea on the Spalding from a visit to General Sherman at Savannah, he received on board ship from General Terry, on Tuesday, January 16, 1865, the Confederate flag just taken from Fort Fisher, at the mouth of Cape Fear River. From the officers and men who participated in that desperate and bloody assault, nearly all of whom he promoted on the spot, he obtained the facts just as they were, and rapidly composed and sent to the people, though directed to the President, a telegram a column in length which caused the national heart to thrill and rejoice-for Fort Fisher had been an effective protection to Wilmington, the only seaport through which foreign goods reached the insurgents.

Gazettes like this came to the people as verities, supplanting all forms of newspaper and other unofficial information. Although the "war diary" did not drive "war correspondents" out of business, it entirely suppressed fabricators of sensational rumors and peddlers of false reports, and wiped out the power of hostile and quasi-disloyal papers to weaken the Government effort or harass

the administration.

This "diary" continued until the war closed and Lincoln's assassins were in captivity, and is a unique feature of military administration. The bulletins, although addressed ostensibly to General John A. Dix, in New York, were in fact given directly to

the associated press operators by Stanton himself and accomplished more in the way of unifying and inspiring the people, reelecting Lincoln, destroying the news fakir, and hastening the end of hostilities than any other instrumentality of similar character. They were official, signed by Stanton as secretary of war; but, during the six years of his incumbency, he did not otherwise. address the public_submitted to no interview, answered no attack, prepared no magazine articles, made no defense, wrote no book, and held his subordinates rigidly to the same line of decorous military conduct. But times have changed. The number of books, pamphlets, magazine and newspaper articles produced by the participants in the recent Spanish-American war far exceeds the aggregate casualties on both sides of the conflict!

*

*There are two exceptions to this statement-when he published a denial in the New York Tribune of responsibility for the victory at Fort Donelson and when, on May 12, 1865, he ordered Edwards Pierrepont to prosecute Horace Greeley for suggesting a vacancy in the office of secretary of war:

"I have written to-night to retain you, Cutting, and Brady, or any one else you may desire to have associated with you, to prosecute Horace Greeley and the owners of the Tribune for Greeley's persistent effort the last four weeks to incite assassins to finish their work by murdering me. Please give the matter your immediate attention on receiving the letter and secure copies of all Tribunes published since the night of the President's murder; also the names of the owners. I propose to prosecute criminally and by civil suit. I shall not allow them to have me murdered and escape responsibility without a struggle for life on my part."

A few days later Stanton furnished proof of malice on the part of Greeley, but the proposed suit was never brought nor was the public aware that it had been contemplated.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

PERFECT AUTOCRACY-THE MILITARY TELEGRAPH.

When he became Secretary Cameron's legal adviser, after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Stanton urged the necessity of acquiring control of all telegraph lines in the country, and retaining it to the end of hostilities. He had been a director in and attorney for the old Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company and engaged for years in the litigation between S. F. B. Morse and the telegraph companies, which gave him a full understanding of the vast possibilities of telegraphy as an instrument of national defense. Cameron made an attempt to follow his advice, but interference by the State Department rendered it ineffective. In August, 1861, General McClellan, who had just reached Washington, approved a censorship which was handed over to the State Department to be managed by an "instrument-maker" from Philadelphia. This arrangement continued until Stanton swept the management of all the telegraph offices and lines in the United States into the War Department by the order of February 26, 1862.

On March 2, having appointed E. S. Sanford supervisor and Anson Stager superintendent, he concentrated the control of the telegraphic machinery of the nation next to his own rooms. Theretofore the telegraph bureau had been managed by General McClellan, and he never forgave Stanton for what he termed "his humiliation."* The change thus wrought was magical. By a single stroke the supply of inside Federal news was cut from the Richmond papers; army officers and high functionaries were prevented from using the lines for Wall Street speculations, and spies

"There was consternation in McClellan's headquarters," says John Francis Coyle, editor of the National Intelligencer, "when Secretary Stanton removed the telegraph outfit. Little Mac's rooms were free and the telegraph lines free. Everybody used them and there were no secrets. It was common to see fifty miscellaneous persons about the headquarters, including women and reporters, and everybody knows what that meant. It was all very exasperating to Mr. Stanton,"

were excluded from the telegraph records.

Energy, concentration, and ceaseless espionage now assumed charge, making what William Bender Wilson of Philadelphia, a distinguished authority,* says "became the most wonderfully accurate, reliable, and intelligent system in the world." Men of loyalty and executive ability, in whom Stanton had implicit confidence, were placed in command, inventing and using a cipher code which the Confederates were never able to unlock, and which the operators and translators never betrayed.

"The first cipher code," says Albert B. Chandler, president of the Postal Telegraph Cable Company, "was a meagre affair arranged by General Anson Stager and printed on a card. The additions and improvements which made the code perfect and brought it finally to book form, were the work of the chief cipher operators of the Department"-Albert B. Chandler, General T. T. Eckert, C. A. Tinker, and D. Homer Bates.

The War Office was placed in direct communication with every arsenal, general, military depot, military prison, barracks, rendezvous, camp, and fort in the Union and, by Stanton's order, every message to, from, and between them passed through the Department and was therein deciphered and a recorded duplicate placed upon his desk.

Even Lincoln was deprived of the use of a special code and sent and received messages through the common channel. A deep box was provided in the operating room into which copies of all messages for him or which he ought to see, were dropped. "He came over from the White House several times a day," says Major A. E. H. Johnson, who had charge of the telegraph records, "and, thrusting his long arm down among the messages, fished them out one by one and read them. When he had secured the last one he invariably made some characteristic remark-generally something that caused laughter-and then proceeded to consult with Secrctary Stanton."

As far as possible, at the outset, Government business was

*Says Mr. Wilson: "On April 17, 1861, I went with Thomas A. Scott to Governor Curtin's office at Harrisburg, and there, with a relay magnet and a key placed on a window sill, opened the first Military Telegraph office on this continent." A day or two later Mr. Scott took D. Homer Bates, David Strouse, Samuel M. Brown, and Richard O'Brien from the Pennsylvania line to establish the first Military Telegraph at Washington,

done over existing telegraph lines; but, when necessary, new lines. were strung throughout the Union either to reach camps or battlefields, or as loops between disconnected commercial systems.* The telegraph office of the War Department was kept open night and day and "during distressing periods," says L. A. Somers of Cleveland, who had charge of a corps of Department operators, "Mr. Stanton slept in the building in order to be ready instantly to attend to important messages. The ordinary operators did not have a key to the code, nor did Mr. Stanton; therefore, General Anson Stager, General T. T. Eckert, or Colonel S. G. Lynch also slept in the building for a time so there should be no delay in translating information coming in late at night."

The method of arranging and preserving the telegraphic history of the war is thus described by the trusted clerk who did itMajor A. E. H. Johnson:

Every message in any way relating to the army and navy, sent or received, was copied and furnished to me on letter sheet paper direct from the telegraph office, which was in the room adjoining the Secretary's. Carbon copies on yellow tissue paper were furnished to the Secretary. These letter sheet telegrams I put in large file books which I kept in chests under lock, each chest containing about ten volumes. The carbon copies I kept in little wooden spring clothespins-used as clips—and which I lettered for each day of the week, including Sunday, for we had no rest.

Mr. Stanton's instructions were to let no person see the telegrams, and I once refused the President. He never gave me an opportunity afterwards to repeat the refusal, but made no sign of displeasure. The telegraph operators were under the same injunction, and although the President frequently went into the telegraph office to send telegrams, the operators would not show him the telegrams coming from the armies, until later during the war, when the rule was relaxed and a box for his use was provided. The messages sent by the Secretary are mostly in his own handwriting, and for many a day they show a labor in writing probably greater than that of any clerk in his office.

Stanton's method of controlling the telegraph lines was peculiarly autocratic and independent. His men were never enlisted, mustered, or commissioned, commissioned, nor permitted, although

*"The boys constructed and operated within the lines of the army 15,389 miles of telegraph and transmitted over 6,000,000 military messages. Amidst the fiercest roar of conflict they were found coolly advising the commanding general of the battle's progress. Their ages ranged from 16 to 22 yearsboys in years but giants in loyalty and in the work they performed for their country," says William Bender Wilson.