[LS]

I haven’t seen these #s, but it would be interesting to find out the total # of telegraph miles in the U.S. in 1860.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I haven’t seen these #s, but it would be interesting to find out the total # of telegraph miles in the U.S. in 1860.

As I say I'm not exactly sure which of my two references contains it, but one of those references shows a map put out by the Census Bureau in the mid-1800s - and while the North shows up as a veritable cobweb of telegraph lines, the South had one major line up the east coast - and little if anything else.

The South didn't want it, for ideological reasons. They didn't even allow railroads to cross state lines. And, BTW, railroads were the "killer app" of telegraphy - railroads owned right of way which they could provide to the telegraph company for free, and the telegraph company had the ability to send valuable messages of command and control of the railroads as their top-priority traffic, also for free.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

it would be interesting to find out the total # of telegraph miles in the U.S. in 1860.

Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails is my book report on a book:

Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails:
The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln
Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.

which printed a map of the telegraph lines reported to the Census Bureau in (I think) 1850, but maybe 1860.