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

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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

Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, sent the following order to the railroad

superintendent of telegraphs.

...