"Lincoln's Surveillance State" Op-Ed NYTimes July 6, 2013

[David Lockmiller]

(08-08-2013 01:51 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  As it turns out, the immediate problem being addressed by President Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton was with the Bureau of Ordnance specifically, and the problem was not the control of any telegraph lines, but rather mortars that were supposed to have been delivered to General Grant in support of his military movement up the Tennessee River.

On the previous day (January 23, 1862), President Lincoln had written the following telegraph message to Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote :

“The President wishes the rafts with their 13 inch mortars and all appointments to be ready for use at the earliest possible moment. What can we do here to advance this? What is lacking? What is being done, so far as you know? Telegraph us every day, showing the progress, or lack of progress in this matter.” [Source: “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, editor, Rutgers University Press, 1953, Volume 5, page 108.]

I came across a related story in "Lincoln Talks, A Biography in Anecdote," pp. 397-98:

When General Grant planned his attack on Forts Donelson and Henry, Mr. Abram S. Hewitt received a dispatch one Sunday evening from the President, asking him if he could build twelve mortar carriages within a month. He telegraphed in reply that he would undertake it if the department would send him a model. The model was sent on Tuesday, and the same night Mr. Hewitt set a message that he would undertake the work. The carriages were delivered in twenty-eight days.

For this work he was not paid promptly, and since he was much in need of money, he went to Washington, after waiting a long time, and applied to Secretary of War Stanton. Stanton gave him a note to the President. When Lincoln saw him--he was of rather short stature-he asked: "Are you Mr. Hewitt?"

"I am."

"Well," said Lincoln, who saw before him a man who had done in one month what no other manufacturer would promise in six months, "I expected to see a man at least eight feet high."

The President sent for Mr. Stanton, and asked why he did not pay Mr. Hewitt's bill. The Secretary replied that he was powerless, but that the President, as commander in chief, could put the matter through, which he did by writing on the bill: "O.K. A. Lincoln." -- Abram S. Hewitt