The Telegraph War - Morse Code in the American Civil War The Civil War was the first war run by wire. Armies that once waited days for orders now fought at the speed of a telegraph key, and a president learned to haunt the telegraph office. Lincoln in the telegraph office Abraham Lincoln spent long hours - sometimes nights - in the small War Department telegraph office next to the White House, reading dispatches as they arrived and drafting orders on the spot. An army of operators The US Military Telegraph Corps, largely civilian operators, strung about 15,000 miles of wire and handled millions of messages. Their Morse skill - and their ciphers - were the Union's nervous system. Translate any text to Morse code, play it as sound and download the audio free at: https://morsecodeworks.com/