Samuel Beckwith (18 December 1837 – 6 December 1916) was a US Army telegraph and cipher officer to Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Samuel Beckwith was born in Madison, New York in 1837, and he joined the US Army in 1862 during the American Civil War. He rose to the rank of Captain in the 11th New York Infantry, and he became a telegraph and cipher officer to Ulysses S. Grant, being nicknamed "Grant's Shadow" by other staff officers. He was the first to transmit news of John Wilkes Booth's whereabouts after Abraham Lincoln's assassination in April 1865. He died in Hampton, Virginia in 1916.