This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything

here on this show, including your stories. Send them to Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your

story. Send them to our American Stories.com.

There's some of our favorites.

Christopher Klein is the author of four books and is a frequent contributor to the History

Channel.

You've heard Chris tell the story of how Johnny Carson saved Twister and how Mark Twain helped

Ulysses S. Grant complete his memoir that saved

his wife from destitution. He's back with another. Here's Christopher Klein with a story of how

Abraham Lincoln used the telegraph to help win this civil war. Nearly 150 years before the

advent of text, tweets, and email, President Abraham Lincoln became

the first wired president by embracing the original electronic messaging technology, the

telegraph.

The 16th president may be remembered for a soaring oratory that stirred the union, but the

nearly 1,000 bite-sized telegrams that he wrote during his presidency

helped win the Civil War by projecting presidential power in unprecedented fashion. The federal

government had been slow to adopt the telegraph after Samuel Morse's first successful test message in

1844. Prior to the Civil War, federal employees who had to send a telegram from the

nation's capital had a wait in line with the rest of the public at the city's central telegraph office.

Days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Andrew Carnegie, the future industrialist,

who at the time was superintendent of the

...