U . S . Military Telegraph Corps The U . S . Military Telegraph Corps was formed in 1861 following the outbreak of the American Civil War . David Strouse , Samuel M . Brown , Richard O ' Brian and David H . Bates , all from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company , were sent to Washington , D . C . to serve in the newly created office . In October of that year , Anson Stager was appointed department head . During the war , they were charged with maintaining communications between the federal government in Washington and the commanding officers of the far - flung units of the Union Army . As such , they played a large part in intercepting and deciphering Confederate communications . Initial organization . Telegraph facilities prior to the Civil War . Before the outbreak of the Civil War , there were three major telegraph companies in operation . These companies were the American Telegraph Company , the Western Union Telegraph Company , and the Southwestern Telegraph Company . The American Telegraph Company ' s lines occupied the entire region east of the Hudson River and ran all along the Atlantic coast down to the Gulf of Mexico . Cities were connected from Newfoundland to New Orleans . From this main backbone , the American Telegraph Company ' s lines branched west to cities like Pittsburg , Philadelphia , and Cincinnati . At each of these points , the American Telegraph Company ' s lines met the Western Union lines which occupied much of the remaining northern portion of the U . S . Western Union also extended a line as far west as San Francisco by 1861 . In the southern states , the American Telegraph Company ' s lines met the Southwestern Telegraph Company ' s lines at Chattanooga , Mobile , and New Orleans . From these cities , the Southwestern Telegraph Company ' s lines occupied the rest of the South and Southwest , including Texas and Arkansas . Formation of Military Telegraph Corps . Not long after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12 , 1861 President Abraham Lincoln ordered seventy - five thousand troops to assemble in Washington , D . C . On April 19 , 1861 , Harpers Ferry , Virginia ( which was along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad ) was captured by Confederate troops . Thus , Washington lost one of its only railroad and telegraphic communications route to the North . The only railroad and telegraph lines connecting the Northern states to Washington left were located in Maryland , a state whose loyalty to the Union was not trusted . Due to the dire situation of the railroads and telegraphic communication in Washington , the commercial telegraph lines surrounding the city were seized and Secretary of War Simon Cameron sent a request to the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad to send Thomas A . Scott to get the railroad telegraph service in Washington under control . Scott made his way to Washington and began filling positions to help him manage the railroads and telegraph lines . He asked Andrew Carnegie , who was superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad to assist him . Carnegie obliged and drafted men from his railroad division to accompany him to Washington in order to help the government take possession of and operate the railroads around the capital . Carnegie ' s first task when he arrived in Washington was to extend the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad from its old depot in Washington across the Potomac River into Virginia . While extending the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad , telegraph lines were built and communication was opened at stations such as Alexandria , Burke ' s Station , and Fairfax . The first government telegraph line built connected the War Office with the Navy Yard . Carnegie stayed in Washington until November 1861 . By the time he left , the military railroad and telegraph operations were running smoothly . Along with the appointment of Carnegie , Colonel Scott made a demand for telegraph operators who excelled at running trains by telegraph . Colonel Scott called on four telegraph operators from the Pennsylvania Railroad to report to Washington . These operators were David Strouse ( who later became the superintendent of the Military Telegraph Corps ) , D . H . Bates , Samuel M . Brown , and Richard O ' Brien . The four operators arrived in Washington on April 27 , 1861 . Strouse and Bates were stationed at the War Department ; Brown was stationed in the Navy Yard ; and O ' Brien was stationed at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad depot , which was for some time army headquarters . Thus , these four men made up the initial United States Military Telegraph Corps , which would ultimately grow to a force of over 1500 men . Special status of the corps . Although the U . S . Military Telegraph Corps played a prominent role in transmitting messages to and from commanders in the battlefield , it functioned independently from military control . As mentioned above , the U . S . Military Telegraph Corps employed civilian operators out on the battlefield and in the War Department . Only supervisory personnel were granted military commissions from the Quartermaster Department in order to distribute funds and property . All of the orders the telegraph operators received came directly from the Secretary of War . Also , because there was no government telegraph organization before the Civil War , there was no appropriation of funds by Congress to pay for the expenses of erecting poles , running cables , or the salaries of operators . As a result , the first six months that the U . S . Military Telegraph Corps was in operation Edward S . Sanford , president of the American Telegraph Company , paid for all these expenses . He was later reimbursed by Congress for his generosity . Construction of telegraph lines . The Telegraph Construction Corps were charged with the dangerous job of building telegraph lines in the field during battles . Consisting of about one hundred fifty men , the Telegraph Construction Corps set out in wagon trains to construct temporary lines . During a battle , one wagon was stationed at the starting point of the battle to act as a receiving station , while another wagon traveled into the field to be a sending station . Thus , the orders could be sent back and forth between general headquarters and the battlefield , and what occurred during the battles could be sent back to the Military Telegraph Office in Washington , D . C . Initially these telegraph lines were only constructed for temporary use because of the brittle exposed copper wire that was used . But , after insulated wire began to be used , permanent lines were built . The Telegraph Construction Corps would load a coil of this wire on a mule ' s back and lead it straight forward to unreel the wire . As the mule moved forward unwinding the wire , two men followed and hung the line on fences and bushes so that it would not be run over until it was propped up with pikes . Because these lines were so vulnerable to Confederate wire tapping and cutting , cavalry patrols kept guard of the wires when they were being built in an area lacking in Union soldiers . Over the course of the war , the Telegraph Construction Corps built a total of 15 , 389 miles of field , land , and submarine telegraph lines . Operators . Serving as a U . S . Military Telegraph Corps operators , whether in the field or in the War Office was a hard and thankless job . The operators that served on the battlefield had the more dangerous job of the two . They encountered the constant threat of being captured , shot , or killed by Confederate troops whether they were establishing communications on the battle front , sending messages behind during a retreat , or venturing out to repair a line . Telegraph operators faced a casualty rate of ten percent , a rate similar to the infantry men they served with . Added to these dangers was the strenuous relationship the operators had with the military commanders they served under . Many of the commanders resented the Military Telegraph Corps operators because they were not members of the military , but employees of the Quartermasters Department . As a result , these commanders felt that the operators were not fit to serve with them and ultimately distrusted these men . Although the job of an operator in the War Office was not as dangerous , it was still a demanding job . The operators had to be quick and intelligent when receiving messages . Important messages were sent using cipher codes . The cipher - operators had the major responsibility of decoding these viable pieces of information and moving the information along to higher - ranking officials or President Lincoln , who frequently visited the Military Telegraph office in the War Department building . Along with decoding Union telegrams , the cipher - operators also had to decode Confederate ciphers . By decoding the Confederate cipher codes , plots such as setting fire to major hotels in New York City were averted . The U . S . Military Telegraph Corps operators served courageously during the Civil War . But , because these men were not members of the military , they did not receive recognition or a pension for their services , even though the supervisory personnel did because of the military commissions they received . As a result , the families of those men killed in action had to depend on charity to continue on . The operators of the U . S . Military Telegraph Corps were not recognized for their service until 1897 , when President Cleveland approved an act directing the Secretary of War to issue certificates of honorable service to all members ( including those who died ) of the U . S . Military Telegraph Corps . But , this certificate of recognition did not include the pension these men passionately sought . Disbanding . Once the Civil War was over the task of reconstructing the Confederate telegraph lines began . The U . S . government required that all of the major communication lines were to be repaired and controlled by the U . S . Military Telegraph Corps . Due to the lack of funds , the Confederate telegraph lines were in bad shape when the war ended and the operators of the U . S . Military Telegraph Corps faced a mountain of work . But these men rose to the challenge and on February 27 , 1865 an order by the Quartermaster General transferred the Union control of telegraph lines in the South to commercial telegraph companies under the supervision of U . S . Military Telegraph Corps Assistant Superintendents . Furthermore , this order relinquished control of all lines seized by the government in the North and sold the lines constructed by the U . S . Military Telegraph Corps to private telegraph companies . Once control of the telegraph lines were turned over to the telegraph companies , the operators were discharged one by one . The only office that remained was the original telegraph office in the War Department .