Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [185]
it is our wish, and it should be yours, to encourage improvements in all the machinery requisite to facilitate this most wonderful mode of rapid communication regardless of any and all selfish or merely personal considerations.
Next Cooper denied that the company had any connection to Daniel Craig. Having said that, he denied that it had any responsibility to counteract what Craig wrote:
we have been wholly unable to appreciate the propriety and more especially the necessity of the American Company’s coming out publicly in the newspapers as you have desired, and disclaiming his unsolicited sayings or doings in favor of our Company or its interests.
Finally Cooper reassured Morse that the directors of American Telegraph were his “best friends.” And having said that, he insisted that friends or not they would go on acquiring a network of lines to connect to the transatlantic cable: “Their progress is onward: they cannot if they could stand still, nor can they go backward.”
A few days later, Morse learned that Cooper meant what he said. He read in a New York newspaper that, in competition with the Morse New York–Albany–Buffalo line, Field’s group had contracted with the Harlem Railroad to build a line along the train route between New York and Albany, using the Hughes telegraph. Astonished, Morse immediately wrote to Cooper again: “I am most reluctant to believe, and will not believe, that gentlemen of the high character which you all hold in the community … are capable of playing with me the deep game of duplicity.” Litigation must follow, he said, unless American Telegraph contradicted the report. And meanwhile his important work on the cable was being disrupted: “I confess, Sir, that I am deeply mortified and much depressed, at the necessity I am under of turning off my mind from experiments bearing upon our Great Ocean Enterprize, to ask for explanations of the most mysterious conduct of those whom I had confidently believed to be my friends.”
But other mysterious doings also needed explaining. While in England with Morse, Field had raised £350,000, nearly $2 million, to form a British partner to American Telegraph called the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The two organizations would join in financing construction of the transatlantic Anglo-American system. Field appointed Morse an Honorary Director and offered to sell him one or more shares, at par.
Field’s non-offer appalled Kendall. Morse surely was entitled to a financial stake in the new British company, without having to buy it. After all, he had given Field free patent rights; at his own expense he had gone abroad to perform valuable experiments on Field’s cable—experiments that continued, also at his own expense. “They have made use of your time, labor, name and reputation in their transatlantic scheme,” Kendall reminded him, “and now … they will allow you to purchase ‘one or more shares’ of their stock ‘at par’!” As Kendall saw it, Field was diddling Morse, taking advantage of his high-minded enthusiasm in the belief that he would demand nothing more solid for his services than honor and praise, membership in another Order of Dannebrog.
Morse thanked Field for the “kind offer” but explained that he had no surplus funds to invest in shares. He inquired politely about what he called “a point of some delicacy”—namely, as he delicately put it, “should there not be something.” What moved him to ask about the “something” was the concern for him of others. Friends asked almost daily how much he stood to earn from the transatlantic enterprise:
I have been somewhat embarrassed in replying that “as yet no interest has been definitely assigned, but I had the promise made verbally to me of my friend Mr. Field that when the company was organized, I should proportionately share with the rest. I am in the hands of friends.