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Morse took a deep breath. “I am told from all quarters that there is but one sentiment in Congress,” he said, “and that the appropriation will unquestionably pass.”

TEN

Hurrah Boys Whip Up the Mules

(1843–1844)

JANUARY and February 1843 were the most anxious months Morse had ever experienced. Staying on in Washington, he awaited the fate of his bill as it went through Congress, “painful and trying to me,” he said, “but there is no help for it but patience.” Every day, tantalizing gossip reached him from the Capitol: his bill might be moved as an amendment to a military bill; might be referred to a committee of the whole; might be opposed by some members from Maine. He asked Sidney to get notices placed in the New York Journal of Commerce and Evening Post, saying that the American press and public supported the appropriation: “it will be read here and produce an effect.” Prodded or not, the representatives felt obliged to “define their position” by idle speechifying, so the House moved with agonizing slowness.

Morse tried to talk himself into the right mood, not pessimistic yet prepared for the worst—although the worst, if it came, would be “disastrous in the extreme.” Deeply as he wished to trust in Providence, he found it difficult, “easier to say ‘Thy will be done’ than at all times to feel it.” And his long stay in the city had used up everything he had. Nearly his every last cent was in his pocket. He steadied himself by thinking that his hard work could not have gone for nothing, that he could not have been brought to Washington, at the urging of congressmen and others in government, merely to be deluded. But he often felt oppressed and headachy, “still waiting, waiting.”

The suspense eased a little on February 21, when the appropriation bill at last came up for vote in the House. Twenty years earlier, Morse had impressively painted the House chamber as a symbol of republican ideals. But the day’s proceedings had less the spirit of Washington and Lafayette than of Punch and Judy Cave Johnson, a congressman from Tennessee, rose to say that since Congress had done much to encourage science, he did not wish to neglect the science of Mesmerism. He therefore proposed an amendment to the bill: half the $30,000 should be given to a mesmerist, enabling him as well as Morse to experiment. As reported in the Congressional Globe,

Mr. [Edward] Stanly said he should have no objection to the appropriation for mesmeric experiments, provided the gentleman from Tennessee was the subject. [A laugh.]

Mr. Cave Johnson said he should have no objection provided the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Stanly] was the operator. [Great laughter.]

A more sober congressman objected that the amendment demeaned the character of the House, and asked the chair to rule it out of order. The chair refused, rousing more laughter by quipping that only scientific analysis could show the analogy between the electromagnetic telegraph and the “magnetism of mesmerism.”

Two days later the appropriation bill passed, barely. Aided by a Whig majority in the House that favored internal improvements, it squeaked through by 89 votes to 83. Morse put the best face on it—“six votes are as good as a thousand”—but he had undergone an ordeal: “I can truly say that I have never passed so trying a period.” And the vote in the Senate remained. There, with only eight days of the session remaining, and six inches of snow on the ground, the bill faced a crowded legislative calendar that included conflicting U.S. and British claims to the huge Oregon Territory.

On March 3, the final day of the session, Morse’s appropriation passed the Senate unopposed and was signed by President John Tyler. His two months of faith and patience had paid off, especially his faith. Often verbose and self-dramatizing, he summed up his reaction in two words: “Laus Deo.”

Morse leaped in to begin work on his experimental line, the first feat of electrical engineering attempted in the United States. He hoped to finish in about eight months, in time for the