"Luke :STOP" "I am your father :STOP"

Source: National Archives

One of my favorite primary sources are telegrams. I think part of that is that they seem so exotic. By the time I understood what they were, they were not all that common. You would see them in movies and it looked cooler than they prbably did when they were the primary form of communication.

Mostly though, its the direct manner information is communicated. Words came at a cost and so talk really wasn't cheap.

What's brought this on is that I showed the kids the telegram above. It is the form Robert E. Lee submitted telling the Confederate War Department that Stonewall Jackson was dead. "It is my melancholy duty..."

The one below is the telegraph sent to the Union War Department by Maj. Robert Anderson acknowledging that he had surrendered Fort Sumter.

Source: National Archives



Here are a couple non-Civil War Related telegrams:

This is one of the first telegrams sent after the iceberg hit the Titanic. Obviously Bruce Ismay was wrong!
Source: US Postal Museum

Ok, this one isn't historic but the advice should have been heeded. The single most cringeworthy thing Mark Hamill does (and there are a few).