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| Friends of Lincoln in his last days—military telegraph operators at City Point. 1864 When Lincoln went to City Point at the request of General Grant, March 23, 1865, Grant directed his cipher operator to report to the President and keep him in touch by telegraph with the army in its advance on Richmond and with the War Department at Washington. For the last two or three weeks of his life Lincoln virtually lived in the telegraph office in company with the men in this photograph. He and Samuel H. Beckwith, Grant's cipher operator, were almost inseparable and the wires were kept busy with despatches to and from the President. Beckwith's tent adjoined the larger tent of Colonel Bowers, which Lincoln made his headquarters, and where he received the translations of his numerous cipher despatches |
