Built by Samuel Morse in 1844, the telegraph was an important form of military communication. Along with it came a set of dots and dashes, known as Morse code, that made it simpler to transmit complex messages across telegraph lines. Around 15,000 miles of electric telegraph cable were strung all along the East Coast and more than a million messages were sent to and from battlefields. Since the Confederate army was unable to construct a large communication campaign, the telegraph was only used by the Union armies. President Abraham Lincoln would daily use the telegraph to know exactly what was happening in battlefields. This gave the Union an advantage because they were able to receive and deliver information much quicker than a horseback messenger. The telegraph as one of the few that helped the Union win the Civil