Amazingly the echo of freedom's right can be heard down through the ages; just as a shadow that creeps across the right's we bear today.
Sometime about May 20, 1861, Attorney General Bates and Simon Cameron, the then Secretary of War, issued instructions for certain U. S. Attorneys a simultaneous raid to take possession of all wire "dispatches sent to or received from the Southern section of the country for a year and upward."
[Series 2, Volume 2, Section 1, page 6].
This did create an almost comedic problem of immense proportion, as an attorney continued to say...."They are so numerous and bulky and so systematically arranged that the marshal determined not to remove them at present and to place two deputy marshals in continual charge of the apartments in which the dispatches were found...."
[Page 7]- "Upon obtaining possession of these dispatches should the record or file in which they are included also embrace other telegraphic dispatches having no construction with the subject you are authorized to assent to the packages which may be taken by you sealed, to be opened and examined on the part of the United States Government....".
These orders encompassed, Philadelphia, Newark, New York, and probably other districts as well.
On May 25, 1861 the U. S. Attorney in New York tells Cameron; [page 8]
"Sir: It is estimated that the telegraphic dispatches in our custody covering a period of a year number not less than 200,000 or 300,000."
Due to the vast sum of the material, the attorney recommended to find someone qualified for employment to be intrusted with the duty for making methodical examinations to investigate charges of treason; that he was too busy with other civil and criminal matters.
Oh what a world of difference then, and yet it truly is not at all that different; just more expeditious.
Lubliner.