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O’Reilly tried again, and lost more. Since the injunction covered only Kentucky, he moved his Louisville office and apparatus across the Ohio River to Jeffersonville, Indiana. In this way he could use his wires in Kentucky to telegraph through to Nashville, while no longer sending messages to or from Kentucky or stationing an operator there. Once more Morse’s lawyers went to court against him. This time the judge ruled that O’Reilly’s sidestepping constituted an aggravated contempt of the injunction. Incensed, he ordered a U.S. marshal to seize enough of O’Reilly’s wires and posts to halt all Columbian transmission through Kentucky. O’Reilly was again away from the scene, but learned that if he came within reach of a writ the judge would imprison him for six months.

The end of 1848 brought Morse some additional healing for his wounds. In November, newspapers for the first time printed the results of a presidential election reported by telegraph. Readers of the morning Herald in New York could find out how voters in fourteen states, nearly half of the nation, had voted the day before. And the following month Morse at last received the Nishan Iftichar, or Order of Glory, awarded to him twelve months earlier by the Sultan of Turkey. The delay was in part due to the English legation in Turkey, which protested that Morse had not invented the telegraph, and in part to the American naval commander who brought the decoration overseas but for some reason failed to deliver it. It turned up in December at the Boston Custom House, with import duties to be paid.

Morse’s Order of Glory was worth waiting for—a gold brooch said to be studded with two hundred diamonds. The accompanying diploma stated that he now bore the Imperial Monogram, and praised him as a man of science, “a Model of the Chiefs of the Nation of the Messiah—may his grade be increased.” He asked the U.S. minister to Turkey to convey to the Sultan his profound appreciation: “no attention I have ever received, has excited such grateful emotions as this from the illustrious and truly noble head of the Turkish Empire.” Fifteen years earlier, in depicting the Catholic peril, he had warned that Americans were vulnerable because of their “anti-republican fondness for titles.” Just the same, in trying to achieve a sense of self-importance he had always sported such titles as Professor, President, Superintendent. He told the minister that he also wished to learn what distinguished persons had received the decoration, and what rank it conferred upon them.

Morse discovered once again that, as Sidney said, the world was Tantalus still. Several newspapers reported that his glittering Nishan Iftichar gave him the rank of Pasha. They pointed out that Article 13 of the Constitution required a U.S. citizen to obtain the consent of Congress before accepting a title of nobility or honor from any “emperor, king, prince or foreign power.” On an American who had not received consent, as Morse had not, the Constitution imposed a severe penalty: “such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States.” A New York paper speculated that when “Pacha” Morse became “denationalized,” his telegraph would revert to the people for their benefit.

And O’Reilly’s go-ahead whirlwind was back. His circulars blared that he had sent a memorial to Congress proposing to establish a spectacular new line of telegraph—to the Far West, bringing the rest of the Union in touch with Oregon and California, “connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coast by lightning intercourse.”

Whatever Morse might count up as a satisfaction without a sting appeared in a brief newspaper notice: “Professor Morse, the lightning man, as he is called, was married on Thursday last, to Miss Sarah E. Griswold, of Louisiana.”

THIRTEEN

The Great Telegraph Case

(1849–1853)

SARAH Elizabeth Griswold, Morse’s second wife, was the daughter of an army officer, born on Christmas Day at a military fort near Lake Superior. Not much more is known about her past, and very little about her married life with Morse. If they wrote