In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war,
Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping
powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By
rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on
vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal.
On the back of Stanton’s letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: “The
Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the
matter within mentioned.”
I came across this letter in the 1990s in the Library of Congress while
researching Stanton’s wartime efforts to control the press, which
included censorship, intimidation and extrajudicial arrests of
reporters. On the same day he received control of the telegraphs,
Stanton put an assistant secretary in charge of two areas: press
relations and the newly formed secret police. Stanton ultimately had
dozens of newspapermen arrested on questionable charges. Within
Stanton’s first month in office, a reporter for The New York Herald, who
had insisted that he be given news ahead of other reporters, was
arrested as a spy.
No comments:
Post a Comment