×

On Abraham Lincoln’s technology addiction:

At City Point on April 1 [1865], Lincoln received reports and sent messages. He haunted the army telegraph office for news of the battles raging in Virginia. He was addicted to this technology.

It was an impatient habit he had formed in Washington. He did not like to wait for important news. To his delight, the War Department telegraph office was a short walk from the Executive Mansion. He became a habitué of the office, befriending the men employed there, to whom he often made surprise visits at any time of the day or night.

Now he was standing over the telegraph operators at City Point, and as soon as they transcribed the reports as they came off the wire, the president snatched the hurried scribblings from their hands.

—James Swanson, Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse (Morrow/HarperCollins, 2010), pp. 18-19.

150 years later, many of us have a similar habit, just with more constant and advanced technology. And of course most of us don’t have the excuse of trying to save the Union!

LOAD MORE
Loading