MONDAY MEDIA / WHEN LINCOLN WEAPONIZED THE MEDIA

Illustration F.Stop Fitzgerald, pillartopost.org

FDR had the Radio 

JFK had television

Obama and Trump had social media

Lincoln had the Telegraph...

When Americans think of Abraham Lincoln’s words, they think of the soaring cadences of the Gettysburg Address or the moral clarity of the Second Inaugural. But Lincoln was more than a writer of great speeches—he was the first president to harness a brand-new technology as a political and military weapon. The telegraph, barely two decades old when the Civil War erupted, became Lincoln’s tool for real-time leadership. His team of aides and allies transformed the White House into the first media-savvy command center in American history. 

The key to this transformation was Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln’s iron-willed Secretary of War. From the War Department’s telegraph office, Stanton controlled the wires that carried orders to generals, battlefield news to Washington, and dispatches to the press. He acted as gatekeeper, timing announcements to steady morale and censoring reports that might give comfort to the enemy. In Stanton’s hands, the telegraph became more than a machine—it was the Union’s messaging weapon, ensuring that Lincoln’s words traveled fast, forceful, and authoritative. 

Lincoln himself grasped the significance of this new medium. He spent long hours in the telegraph office, pacing between desks, dictating instructions, or waiting for frontline reports. For the first time in history, a president could speak across hundreds of miles not by messenger or mail coach, but in near-real time. His generals felt his presence in ways no predecessor could have imagined. Yet Lincoln’s mastery of media was not only about speed—it was also about clarity. His secretaries John Nicolay and John Hay helped refine his proclamations and speeches into crisp, quotable lines that fit easily into newspaper columns. Their penmanship ensured the president’s words retained their force when carried by telegraph and reprinted nationwide. William H. Seward, his seasoned Secretary of State, lent polish to documents with international stakes, guiding Lincoln’s voice to resonate beyond America’s shores. 

At the same time, Lincoln cultivated powerful journalistic allies. Editors like Henry Raymond of The New York Times and Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune amplified his messages, framing the president’s dispatches as both news and moral argument. Lincoln’s gift for memorable phrasing—“a house divided,” “with malice toward none”—was perfectly suited to this new ecosystem of wires and presses. 

What makes Lincoln’s media operation revolutionary is its resemblance to later eras of communication. Franklin Roosevelt had radio. John F. Kennedy had television. Obama and Trump had Social Media. 

And as we mentioned, Lincoln had the telegraph. He and Stanton used it as a military tool and in a way to command public opinion and to shape the story of the war as it unfolded. By the end of the Civil War, the United States had witnessed not only the preservation of the Union but also the birth of real-time presidential communication. 

The telegraph gave Lincoln a new kind of reach, and his team—the pen of Hay, the polish of Seward, the discipline of Stanton—ensured his words struck their targets with unprecedented power. Lincoln’s genius was not only in the writing. It was in recognizing that words, to matter, must travel—and that a president must master the newest medium to lead effectively.