Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [129]
Smith had other ideas about how to cash in on Morse’s success. He offered to take over all telegraph negotiations for the next six years—“selling, leasing, constructing, & using”—putting his partners on salary and giving them a share of his profits. “It is unnecessary to say,” Morse remarked, “it was at once rejected as absurd.” Alternatively Smith proposed a geographical division. He would control the New England states, his partners New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Morse greeted this with no less disdain. “I can hardly think you intended the proposition seriously,” he replied. “I cannot of course accede to a proposition so manifestly unequal.”
Some such division, however, appealed to Morse as possibly freeing him from Smith. He granted Smith the right to contract separately for a line from Boston to New York—not a promising venture since Smith understood little about telegraphy. Smith sent Cornell to Boston to exhibit Morse’s telegraph, hoping to raise money for his line from local “Merchant Princes.” As Smith’s one ally in the enterprise, Cornell helped him to aggravate Morse. Aside from longstanding gripes about salary and workload, Cornell believed, very improbably, that Morse had seen drawings he made of a new register and had stolen his design. Smith cheered on Cornell’s dislike of Morse, and they swapped abusive comments about him by mail.
Morse’s efforts to take advantage of his bright prospects antagonized not only Smith but also Alfred Vail, his other partner. Vail, too, nursed a list of grievances—that Morse was overbearing and erratic, broke promises, took him for granted. It distressed him that Morse had still not officially registered with the Patent Office his two-sixteenths interest in the patent. If Morse died, he might not be able to claim his share—and he had a wife and children to think about. He repeatedly asked Morse to register his name. But Morse nonchalantly said he would see, it wasn’t necessary, it could be done at any time, “putting off this matter of so much importance to me, and my dependent family.”
Morse’s handling of the new business opportunities deepened Vail’s resentment. He complained that Morse set terms for the sale of patent rights without consulting him, offering the rights cheaply even though people in Washington said the telegraph was “worth millions.” He also deplored Morse’s consent to Smith’s Boston–New York line. Smith was a “cunning deceitful man” bent on freezing him out: “I have no mind to give Mr. Smith any advantage in making money out of the Telegraph.” Besides, Morse’s decision to allow private individuals to own a major line would discourage Congress from purchasing the patent on behalf of the nation. All of Morse’s business dealings, Vail decided, betrayed his gullibility: “Professor Morse has confidence in … everybody till they cheat him.”
Vail probably kept his disgust to himself. Behind the scenes, his brother George kept reminding him that the family’s profit from their substantial investment in the telegraph depended on Morse’s goodwill: “upon every consideration,” George advised, “keep Morse your particular friend.” Meanwhile, through connections of his own, George quietly looked into the possibility of establishing a Vail telegraph line in Austria.
Despite Smith’s scheming and raving, Morse managed to get before Congress an appropriation bill for extending