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UNION SIGNAL COMMUNICATIONS: INNOVATION AND CONFLICT Paul J. Scheips The story of Civil War signal communications is the story of two organizations—the United States Army Signal Corps and the United States Military Telegraph. By the time of the American conflict several European nations had made some military use of the electric telegraph, notably in the Crimean War, but how well this European experience was known in the United States is not evident.1 In any case, the Civil War, which was first in many things, was first in the extensive employment of the telegraph for all possible wartime purposes, although there was no military telegraph organization in the nation at the beginning of the war. Ite army did have, however, one signal officer, Albert James Myer, who had introduced his visual system into the service. To that extent the U.S. Army was ahead of its contemporaries elsewhere. From Fort Duncan, Texas, where he was an assistant surgeon, Myer inquired in 1856 if the government might be interested in his signaling system, which, he explained, grew out of an interest in military communications that went back to 1851. No action followed until 1859, when a board headed by Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee gave a qualified endorsement to Myer's scheme. This was followed by field tests, principally conducted by Myer and Second Lieutenant Edward Porter Alexander.2 The results of these tests led to an act of June 21, 1860, which authorized the appointment of one signal officer with the rank of major Mr. Scheips is with the Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army. This article is based on research completed for his doctoral dissertation to be presented at American University. !See Senate Exec. Doc. No. 59, 36 Cong., 1 sess. (Serial 1036), p. 110, and Senate Exec. Doc. No. ?, ibid. (Serial 1037), p. 87. 2 Myer to Secy, of War, Oct. 1, 1856, Albert J. Myer Papers, Signal Corps Museum , Ft. Monmouth, N.J.; "Report of a Board of Officers for the Examination of the System of Military Signals Devised by Assistant Surgeon A. J. Meyer [sic]," Mar. 12, 1859, 53-L (1859), Record Group 94, National Archives; end. (Alexander 's reports) with Myer to Adj. Gen., June 16, 1860, Myer Papers. (Archives record groups are hereafter cited as RG. ) 399 400PAUL J. SCHEIPS (over Senator Jefferson Davis' objections) and $2,000 for signaling equipment. Myer's assignment to the post quickly followed, and he was sent off to New Mexico to try his system. There he earned the friendship of Major E. R. S. Canby, who, while generally approving of Myer's system, questioned Myer's idea for having all army officers instructed in signaling, insisting instead that as a practical matter signal operations in large commands "should be confided to officers and men especially selected" for the duty.3 Myer later essentially adopted this view. It was also while in New Mexico in early 1861 that Myer, unable to secure Alexander's services, had detailed to him Second Lieutenants William J. L. Nicodemus and Samuel T. Cushing. Both—especially Nicodemus—would gain prominent places in Ae Signal Corps. (After the war, when the Rebel archives were probed, it would come to light that a resident of Baltimore had written Jefferson Davis in March, 1861, that Nicodemus desired a commission in the Confederacy; because of this letter, the War Department would later refuse to assign Nicodemus to a regiment and he would request and receive a discharge, perhaps never knowing where the trouble lay.)4 Orders of May, 1861, now took Myer to the East, where his system would get its first test in combat. The equipment commonly used in Myer's visual system consisted of flags for daytime and torches burning turpentine for night signaling. There was a red, a white, and a black flag, with a white center in both red and black flags and a red center in the white flag. The staffs, to which the flags were attached, were of hickory and made in four tapering joints fitted together by brass ferrules. The third joint had a six-inch brass guard at its upper end to protect...

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