• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

M 3 cheers have been given here for Polk and 3 for the Telegraph.

By Morse’s account, the hundreds of people outside the room, mostly members of Congress, called for him to appear at the window, where they added three cheers for him. He and Vail closed up shop on a less stirring note:

V Have you had your dinner

M yes have you

V yes what had you

M mutton chop and strawberries.

Morse created more excitement the following day by making his system part of the process for selecting Polk’s running mate. The Baltimore convention nominated Silas Wright, an anti-slavery senator. The delegates’ choice was telegraphed to Wright, who immediately telegraphed back from Washington that he declined. A second message went out from Baltimore asking him to reconsider, but he wired back that his mind was made up. A third message informed him that the convention had adjourned for the day but that five delegates had been appointed to confer with him in the capital, where they would arrive next morning. The long-distance political bargaining, the National Register reported, went on “with lightning speed.”

Morse kept the line in operation after the Democratic convention closed, with spectacular results. Like New York, Philadelphia had been riven by nativist debates about the relation of Catholic citizens to the public schools. A week after the convention, Catholic-Protestant fighting with fists, knives, and pistols broke out in Philadelphia, eclipsing in violence the sack of Boston’s Ursuline Convent School in 1834.

Vail intercepted news of the bloodletting as it arrived by express train in Baltimore. Then he telegraphed reports to Morse, who brought them personally to Secretary of State John C. Calhoun: “continued riots at Philadelphia…. The mob has possession of the city … Gen Cadwallader has fled for his life … 40 or 50 killed and wounded.” With two Catholic churches and many Irish homes burned to the ground, Morse’s line also showed its potential by sending on to President Tyler a request for aid from the mayor of Philadelphia. Throngs gathered around Vail and Morse to watch the urgent transmissions: “The Rooms are crouded with gazing spectators,” Cornell wrote to his wife, “whose countinances are not unfrequently distorted with wonder and amazement.”

In June, Morse opened the line to selected members of the public. A Washington post office employee was informed of the birth of his Baltimore grandson: “Mother and son doing well.” From Baltimore, the incendiary Samuel Colt detonated a fuse of gunpowder in the antechamber of the Supreme Court building. Members of the Washington Chess Club played Baltimoreans an intercity over-the-wire match, “with the same ease,” Morse remarked, “as if the players were seated at the same table.” The celebrated Antarctic explorer Captain Charles Wilkes conducted a three-day experiment in the more exact determination of differences of longitude.

Morse had suggested this scientific use for the telegraph five years earlier. Establishing longitude meant knowing the time in two far-apart places at once, a one-hour difference representing fifteen degrees of longitude. Wilkes was able to place Battle Monument Square in Baltimore 1 m. 34 sec. 868 east of the Capitol, correcting former measurements by .732 of a second. “Your Telegraph,” he told Morse, “offers the means for determining Meridian distances more accurately than ever before within the power of Instruments and Observors.” The improvement mattered because communities all over America defined their own local time, and travelers had to readjust their watches from city to city. By making possible the all but instantaneous synchronization of distant places, Morse’s telegraph augured the introduction of a uniform national time.

Morse produced his most impressive show during the fall presidential elections. He assigned Vail to the Washington station and positioned a new assistant, Henry Rogers, at the Baltimore end. As election returns from the southern states arrived at the capital, Vail sent them on to Baltimore. At the same time, Rogers tapped out from