The Telegraph

There is no use of being choice about terms any longer, the telegraph between Iowa and Chicago is a nuisance – so far as the press is concerned. The most trivial matter is assumed as sufficient cause to prevent us receiving our regular dispatches. With every rain they fail, and then comes the excuse that the battery at the junction works badly and they cannot be reshipped at that point. It would pay the press of Iowa to contribute and purchase a new battery for Bureau junction. It’s a little remarkable, however that the line becomes convalescent of an evening just long enough to transmit a few paragraphs, so as to make the customary charge! We don’t know who is to blame for this irregularity and would not now make a complaint, only that some of our citizens seem to imagine the press and the telegraphers in collusion to keep them from receiving the latest news.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, April 22, 1862, p 1