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By Root 1522 0

the hopeless darkness a year ago, the painfully slow labor of improving his instruments, the pie-in-the-sky offers extended then withdrawn, the suspense of waiting for an out-of-humor Congress to act, the indifference or perfidy of his partners—not to mention the many mornings before that when he arose not knowing where to find money for common expenses of the day, and his still earlier years of frustration as a painter. Reflecting on what he had survived and overcome, he told Sidney, he found himself constantly exclaiming, “What hath God wrought!”

Scarcely if at all remarked on at the time, the scriptural message would owe much of its later historical radiance to Morse’s invocations of it throughout his life. For him, it marked not the event but the gestation of the event. His work on the telegraph had all along been sustained by his belief that technology and theology were two sides of the same thing, that the inspiration and end of his invention was the greater glory of God, and secondly of God’s country. The conviction expressed in the text suggested by Annie Ellsworth’s mother had been in his mind day and night: “ ‘What hath God wrought!’ It is his work, and He alone could have carried me thus far through all my trials and enabled me to triumph over the obstacles, physical and moral, which opposed me.” His uplifting had come in answer to prayer, had come from God’s right arm which brings salvation. In recalling how his many trials had issued to his advantage, he felt his faith strengthened and believed he might never again mistrust the future.

Beginning with his arduous conversion, however, Morse’s long and deep religious experience had taught him that such assurance was often short-lived. The heart was deceitful, the future uncertain. Only three weeks after the triumphant inaugural demonstration of May 24 he took a bad fall, wounding his leg. He had injured his leg years before, as a boy studying at Phillips Academy. This time the painful wound confined him to bed in Washington. Though repeatedly dressed by a physician, it took six weeks to heal.

Not only failure, but prosperity, too, Morse could see, was a trial. The applause he heard so eagerly might rouse the natural pride of his heart, tempt him to take too much credit for what he had achieved, forget that without Christ he could do nothing. It was proper for him to rejoice, and he did. But he rejoiced, he said, with fear. In his new station in life he would need new strength to fortify him against the temptations of self-love: “If I am to have influence, increased influence, I desire to have it for Christ, to use it for his cause; if wealth, for Christ; if more knowledge, for Christ. I speak sincerely when I say I fear prosperity.”

SAMUEL F. B. MORSE

I jump’d aboard the tel-e-graph and trabbled down de ribber,

De lectrick fluid magnified, and kill’d five hundred Nigga.

—Stephen Foster, “Oh! Susanna” (1848)

[T]his volume of Moby Dick may be pronounced a most remarkable sea-dish—an intellectual chowder of romance, philosophy, natural history, fine writing, good feeling, bad sayings.

—Literary World, November 22, 1851

The great difference between Young America and Old Fogy, is the result of Discoveries, Inventions, and Improvements.

—Abraham Lincoln, “Lecture on Discoveries

and Inventions” (1859)

Samuel F. B. Morse, at about sixty (Princeton University Library)

ELEVEN

Mere Men of Trade

(1844–1845)

THE MUCH-APPLAUDED success of the Baltimore-Washington telegraph left Morse with a question: What next?

As one possible move, Morse considered giving the commercial development of his system to private investors. He had many bids from capitalists and speculators, some wanting to buy rights to the line, others seeking to build new lines themselves. Still others asked him to build lines for them—not only locally but to and from Buffalo, Richmond, Mobile, New Orleans. A Baltimore merchant wanted to buy out the entire patent. Morse offered to sell his nine-sixteenths share in it for $110,000—a sum not half the value of his invention, he reasoned,