From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com   
      
   Ted Widmer, *Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington*   
      
   1. The Lightning   
   1 THE LIGHTNING   
   he drilled   
      
   through every plank and fitted them together,   
      
   fixing it firm with pegs and fastenings.   
      
   As wide as when a man who knows his trade   
      
   Marks out the curving hull to build a ship…   
      
   â€”Homer, The Odyssey, book 5, lines 246–2502   
   NOVEMBER 6, 1860   
      
   Abraham Lincoln was in the headquarters of the Illinois & Mississippi   
   Telegraph Company, on the north side of Springfield’s public square, when he   
   received the news that he was likely to win New York, and with it, the   
   presidency.3 It began with a soundâ   
   €”the click-clack of the telegraph key, springing to life as the information   
   raced toward him. A reporter for the New-York Tribune heard the returns begin   
   to “tap in,â€� audibly, with the first “fragments of intelligence.â€�4   
   Then, a flood, as more    
   returns came in from around the country, bringing news as electric as the   
   devices clattering around the room.   
      
   All wires led to Springfield that evening, or so it felt to John Hay, who   
   wrote that Lincoln’s room was “the ear of the nation and the hub of the   
   solar system.â€�5 As dispatchers danced around the suite, Lincoln sat   
   languidly on a sofa, like a spider    
   at the center of an enormous web. That word had already been used to describe   
   the invisible strands connecting Americans through the telegraph.6 Every few   
   minutes, the web twitched again, as an electromagnetic impulse, transmitted   
   from a distant polling    
   station, was transcribed onto a piece of thin paper, like an onion skin, and   
   handed to him.7 Not long after ten, one of these scraps was rushed into his   
   hands. The hastily scribbled message read, “The city of New York will more   
   than meet your    
   expectations.â€�8   
      
   Immediately after, he crossed the square to meet his rapturous supporters,   
   when he was handed another telegram, from Philadelphia. He read it aloud:   
   â€œThe city and state for Lincoln by a decisive majority.â€� Then he added his   
   all-important commentary: â   
   €œI think that settles it.â€� Bedlam ensued.9   
      
   Lincoln elected!   
      
   It was the headline of the century, and Americans sent it all night long,   
   tapping out the Morse code for Lincoln as quickly as possible: the single long   
   dash, for L, beginning the word that would be repeated endlessly through   
   American history from that    
   night forward. It was already so familiar that many just compressed his name   
   to a single letter, especially when paying to send a telegram. “L and H were   
   elected,â€� James A. Garfield noted into his diary, omitting needless letters   
   (the H stood for    
   Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Lincoln’s running mate). “God be praised!!â€� he   
   wrote when he finally heard the news, wrested from the wires, in a rural Ohio   
   telegraph station. The future president had driven his horse and carriage   
   fifteen miles in the    
   middle of the night, just to be connected.10   
      
   In newspaper offices, editors struggled to find type sizes big and bold enough   
   to match the import of what they were hearing. Across the country, crowds   
   stayed up late, hoping to glean new scraps of intelligence from the wires that   
   thrummed with the    
   sensational news. In New Haven, Connecticut, people flat-out screamed for a   
   full ten minutes when the result was announced.11 In Port Huron, Michigan, a   
   thirteen-year-old boy, Thomas Alva Edison, was so eager to get the news that   
   he put his tongue on a    
   wire to receive its electric impulse directly. In Galena, Illinois, young   
   Republicans held a spontaneous “jollificationâ€� inside a leather shop,   
   where they were served oysters by the owner’s son, Ulysses Grant. Despite   
   the fact that he leaned toward    
   Democrat Stephen Douglas, the younger Grant seemed “gratified.â€�12   
      
   In Springfield, it seemed like the entire town was out in the streets, as a   
   crowd described as “10,000 crazy peopleâ€� descended upon the square,   
   â€œshouting, throwing up their hats, slapping and kicking one another.â€� The   
   last stragglers went home    
   around dawn, after yelling themselves hoarse.13   
      
   But the news did not go to sleep; it traveled all night along the wires that   
   stretched across the oceanic expanse of the United States. The word telegraph   
   derived from Greek, to connote “far writing,â€� an accurate description of   
   an American grid    
   extending from the frigid wastes of northern Maine to tropical Florida. No one   
   built them more quickly: not far from Troy, Kansas, an English traveler was   
   astonished to see new lines racing across the prairie, six miles closer to the   
   Pacific each day.14   
      
   Not everyone had welcomed the clunky overhead lines when they were first   
   introduced; New York City had briefly refused, for fear that “the   
   Lightning,â€� as the telegraph was called, would attract real lightning.15 The   
   wires were not always reliable in    
   the early years; the news might vanish along the way, due to storms or   
   atmospheric disturbances. A year earlier, at the end of August 1859, an   
   intense solar flare known as the Carrington Event wreaked havoc on the grid,   
   causing flames to shoot out, and    
   machines to turn on and off, as if operated by witches. In a small   
   Pennsylvania town—Gettysburg—a minister recorded his observation of “a   
   mass of streamers,â€� red and orange, streaking across the sky.â€�16   
      
   In the years leading up to the election, the Lightning had become a part of   
   the republic’s bloodstream. Readers thrilled to the “telegraphic   
   intelligenceâ€� that filled newspaper columns, with hard information about   
   stock prices, ship arrivals, and    
   the movements of armies around the world. They also enjoyed news that was not   
   quite news, describing royal birthdays in Europe or the arrival of visiting   
   â€œcelebritiesâ€�—to use a term that was coming into vogue to describe   
   people who were known    
   simply for being known.17   
      
   But even if the Lightning could race across great distances, it could not   
   bring Americans closer together. Some worried that it was actually driving   
   them apart. In 1858, three days after the first Atlantic Cable connected New   
   York and London, the New    
   York Times asked if the news would become “too fast for the truth?â€�18 Two   
   years later, as Lincoln ran for the presidency, hateful innuendoes were   
   streaking from one end of the country to another, accelerated by the   
   Lightning.19 Many observed that the    
   first word in the country’s name—United—had become a glaring misnomer.   
   Things got so bad that the Architect of the Capitol, Benjamin Brown French,   
   began to put quotation marks around it.20   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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