Top of an American Union Telegram from around 1880. Note the wording, “Lessees of the Dominion Telegraph Co.”


with the B&O, Pennsylvania, Pittsburg, Cincinnati & St. Louis, Eastern of Massachusetts, Central Iowa, Cincinnati Southern, Western & Atlantic, Atlanta & West Point, Western Alabama, Mobile & Montgomery, New Orleans & Mobile, Georgia, Richmond & Potomac,  Dominion Telegraph ignored past agreements with Western Union, allowing Gould to lease the entire Dominion Telegraph. This move doubled the size of American Union’s network and created a trunk line to Chicago via Canada. In the west, Jay Gould utilized his railroad  Railroads. American Union became in less than two years the most formidable opposition      control, and they took possession of the A&P lines enabling American Union to send  not long before American Union had created a telegraph artery to the West. Realizing that  takeover of their lines, they took their case to the courts, when in May of 1880 the United States Circuit Court reinstated Western Union’s ownership of several lines “snatched” by American Union. By early 1880, Gould’s old friend Thomas T. Eckert joined American Union as President, succeeding D.H. Bates.


Norvin Green privately warned William Vanderbilt that what they were witnessing in American Union’s actions was an attempt not to break Western Union, but to break their  stock market by manipulating stock prices through his actions and “anti-monopolistic propaganda.” Green believed that Gould was buying Western Union stock throughout this period, and that he intended to use American Union as a means to eventually gain control of Western Union.


By late 1880 American Union had gained so much ground that Western Union’s telegraph dominance weakened considerably. Gould had successfully built a national telegraph


December 2018 45


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