Telegraph Construction Train, Army of the Potomac
The entire train consisted of 30 or more battery wagons, wire reels & construction carts.
Telegraph Construction Corps stringing wire.
Under combat conditions, a coil of insulated wire was mounted on a mule. As the mule was led along, men followed stringing the wire on any convenient branch, fence post, etc. Regular cavalry patrols watched the lines.
Field Telegraph party, Petersburg June 22, 1864
Behind the tent is an electric battery wagon.
During the Siege of Petersburg headquarters, depots, entrenchments & picket lines were connected by telegraph lines. Frontline operators worked from bombproof bunkers.
The single wire for the Beardslee Repeating Telegraph were insulated with gutta percha. The unvulcanized rubber allowed the wire to be laid the ground & under water. The wagon carried 20 miles or more of wire plus poles with metal hooks for the wire & pointed shoes.
Beardslee Repeating Telegraph Operator
It was officially called the army signal-telegraph.
The Beardslee apparatus could transmit a maximum of 5 to 8 miles. Unlike conventional telegraphs, the Beardslee created its own electricity. Turning the arm that the operator is holding spun a magneto that caused the arm of the receiving unit to move in symphony. Words were spelled out a letter at a time. Unlike other forms of signaling, there was no need to encode messages. The Beardslee signal could not be tapped. A constant electrical charge was all that was transmitted by the wire, there is no data of any kind to be intercepted.
At Stones River NB living history volunteers present signal programs on a regular basis.
During the war, Murfreesboro TN was a nexus for the signal net of the Army of the Cumberland.
Visual signals using flags & torches, telegraph & Beardeslee Repeating Telegraphs were perfected here.
Telegraph key & ten volt wet cell battery.
Multiple batteries carried in a battery wagon could be hooked together to increase the range of the signal.
The two tables hold telegraph & Beardslee units that are used by volunteers to demonstrate sending & receiving signals.
The handle on the right of the dial is used to turn a magneto & send letters one at a time.
The pointer is indicating the letter X, which was sent by the other unit.
The paired Beardslee units had to be set up by transmitting from one unit to the other.
The set screw in the center was loosened to move the indicator to the position of the handle, which synchronized the units.
Because the only way to intercept the signal was to have a Beardslee synced to the signaler.
The synchronization involves signaling to & from in a way that makes tapping the line effectively impossible.
Signaling with the Beardslee was slow, however not having to encode & decode messages saved both time & avoided transmission errors.
A Beardslee was carried forward during the attack on the Mule Shoe. The violence of the fighting made that early attempt at command & control a failure.
To directly answer the question, no, telegraph wires would not have been run under the river. The gutta percha rubber insulation was not durable. In hot weather, the insulation turned into something similar to rubber cement. When it was cold, the insulation cracked. Over time, the unvulcanized rubber became brittle & broke up. Until Mr. Goodyear invented vulcanizing, rubber was a very problematic insulation material.
Historic images Library of Congress. Stones River photos of volunteer John Betner by the author.