A resourceful self-made journalist and businessman. Daniel H. Craig built the Associated Press into a national news monopoly during the decade preceding the Civil War. Shrewdly practicing the arts of business correspondence, investment, and news gathering, Craig systematized and expanded the amorphous AP news agency which six leading New York City newspapers had gradually improvised during the few years before Craig took it over in 1851. So successful were Craig's efforts at eliminating competition, building a system of reporters and clients, and providing a news report which newspaper editors came to view as indispensable, that his wire service became the vehicle by which President Lincoln's administration released dispatches and announcements to the public during the Civil War, breaking the tradition of Washington papers serving as presidential mouthpieces. At the same time Craig took a decisive role in the development of telegraphy, thereby both amassing a personal fortune and protecting...