Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [125]
But Morse’s “magic chords” put to rest any fears that the swelling United States was doomed to burst apart. As a government report explained:
Doubt has been entertained by many patriotic minds how far the rapid, full, and thorough intercommunication of thought and intelligence, so necessary to a people living under a common representative republic, could be expected to take place throughout such immense bounds. That doubt can no longer exist. It has been resolved and put an end to forever by the triumphant success of the electro-magnetic telegraph of Professor Morse….
Many likened this interconnectedness to the central nervous system: “Touch but one nerve with skilful hand, /Through all the thrill unbroken flies.” Now American institutions could be extended indefinitely, the nation becoming a lightning-bound network of communities within minutes’ reach of each other, a single neuro-electropolis. Despite the vastness of the territory across which their tens of millions were spread, Americans would become more and more one people, thinking and acting alike.
In forecasting other social changes that Morse’s invention might bring, antebellum futurologists adapted their thinking to the Gospel of Progress. The New York Sun proclaimed the telegraph “the greatest revolution of modern times and indeed of all time, for the amelioration of Society.” It would create civic order, strengthen domestic ties, bring harmony among nations, and redeem mankind.
In this spirit, the Utica Gazette anticipated an “immense diminution” in crime. Felons would give up hope of escaping justice: “fly, you tyrants, assassins and thieves, you haters of light, law, and liberty, for the telegraph is at your heals [sic].” Domestic joy and sorrow would thrill along the wires: “the absent will scarcely be away,” rhapsodized the Philadelphia North American, “the mother may, each day, renew her blessing upon her child a thousand leagues away; and the father, each hour, learn the health of those around his distant fireside.” The author of “The Song of the Telegraph” promised that war would cease:
With the olive branch extended,
Swift I go to every shore;
Soon all nations shall be blended,
They shall learn of war no more.
Ultimately nations would be wired to each other, making the planet a neural map, what the Christian Observor called a “sensorium of communicated intelligence.” Acting through the global cyborg, God’s grand processes would realize His grand design of leading humanity toward salvation. As the New York Herald put it, “What a future!”
In its more practical effects, the telegraph would whet the appetite for news, strengthen national defense, and boost the country’s go-ahead businessmen, transforming the press, the military, and the marketplace. News of the Declaration of Independence had taken more than two weeks to reach Williamsburg, Virginia, from Philadelphia. In the near future, by contrast, “the events of yesterday throughout the entire land will be given, as we now give the occurrences at home today.” Should European despots threaten an invasion, the government would activate the “mystic meshes,” instantly alarming the entire country and raising three million fighting men: “no power of a foreign country could long have a foot-hold among a people who possess such combined and prodigious means of concentrating its great strength.” With the country pulling out of its long economic depression, the telegraph would carry complex business deals, in secrecy if desired, making commerce no longer dependent on snail-paced mail or agitated by rumors. Guarantees sent at lightning speed would take the place of precious metals and banknotes: “gold and silver may stay at home … or be laid aside in flower pots and old stockings. The lightning will have taken up their task.”
Whatever their particular hopes, all those who praised Morse’s apparatus agreed in viewing it as a surpassing marvel.