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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLincoln’s Surveillance State
By DAVID T. Z. MINDICH
Published: July 5, 2013
COLCHESTER, Vt. BY leaking details of the National Security Agencys data-mining program, Edward J. Snowden revealed that the governments surveillance efforts were far more extensive than previously understood. Many commentators have deemed the governments activities alarming and unprecedented. The N.S.A.s program is indeed alarming but not, from a historical perspective, unprecedented. And history suggests that we should worry less about the surveillance itself and more about when the war in whose name the surveillance is being conducted will end.
In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stantons letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.
I came across this letter in the 1990s in the Library of Congress while researching Stantons wartime efforts to control the press, which included censorship, intimidation and extrajudicial arrests of reporters. On the same day he received control of the telegraphs, Stanton put an assistant secretary in charge of two areas: press relations and the newly formed secret police. Stanton ultimately had dozens of newspapermen arrested on questionable charges. Within Stantons first month in office, a reporter for The New York Herald, who had insisted that he be given news ahead of other reporters, was arrested as a spy.
Published: July 5, 2013
COLCHESTER, Vt. BY leaking details of the National Security Agencys data-mining program, Edward J. Snowden revealed that the governments surveillance efforts were far more extensive than previously understood. Many commentators have deemed the governments activities alarming and unprecedented. The N.S.A.s program is indeed alarming but not, from a historical perspective, unprecedented. And history suggests that we should worry less about the surveillance itself and more about when the war in whose name the surveillance is being conducted will end.
In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stantons letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.
I came across this letter in the 1990s in the Library of Congress while researching Stantons wartime efforts to control the press, which included censorship, intimidation and extrajudicial arrests of reporters. On the same day he received control of the telegraphs, Stanton put an assistant secretary in charge of two areas: press relations and the newly formed secret police. Stanton ultimately had dozens of newspapermen arrested on questionable charges. Within Stantons first month in office, a reporter for The New York Herald, who had insisted that he be given news ahead of other reporters, was arrested as a spy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/opinion/lincolns-surveillance-state.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
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Lincoln’s Surveillance State (Original Post)
FarCenter
Jul 2013
OP
kentuck
(111,110 posts)1. Was Lincoln ever wrong?
Or was he perfect?
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)3. He was pivotal in changing the US from agrarian society to a centralized, industrial, imperial state
GeorgeGist
(25,324 posts)2. In a parallel universe somewhere ...
Lincoln allowed the South to secede. I wonder how that's working out?
Safetykitten
(5,162 posts)4. They won and WalMart makes cars.