Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [224]
Even occasions that should have comforted Morse became trials. He had, of course, often been feted, but never before on the scale of the gargantuan six-hour banquet given in his honor by Western Union. The Times devoted virtually its entire front page to reporting what it called “one of the most magnificent affairs of the kind that ever took place in this City.” For the event, on the evening of December 29, Delmonico’s restaurant exuberantly sprouted profusions of flowers and flags, a representation of Franklin’s kite experiment, a statue of Jove launching bolts of lightning, among much else. A sixteen-piece orchestra played such operatic selections as “Barbe Bleu” and “La Grande Duchesse.”
The many eminences among the more than two hundred diners included the presidents of Yale and Columbia, the British ambassador to America, the Attorney General of the United States, and Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Morse’s family and friends attended—Sarah and their daughter Lela, Sidney Morse, Amos Kendall, Cyrus Field, Asher B. Durand, William Cullen Bryant. Telegrams arrived from Admiral David Farragut (“Damn the torpedoes”) and from President-elect Ulysses S. Grant. The menu, adorned with an engraving of Morse bemedaled, offered ten courses of Escaloppes de bass, aux éperlans dauphins, Grouses en salmis aux truffles, and Pain de faisans à la Chantilly, with six courses of wine and champagne, not to mention oysters, sorbets, sweets, and desserts. The guests hoisted sixteen toasts during the evening, with lengthy responses and speeches that heaped praise on Morse until after midnight.
But the regal blowout was not exactly the tribute it seemed. Western Union very probably dreamed up the event to win public support for itself. By now Western Union had absorbed all the chief American telegraph companies. Using Morse’s system, it commanded 37,000 miles of telegraph line and administered over 2000 stations. For this the transcontinental corporate giant was denounced by reformers and politicians who considered monopolies unhealthy in American economic life. At the time of the banquet, Congress was looking into proposals for the government to build and operate its own telegraph system under the Post Office Department, in competition with Western Union; or, alternatively, to buy out and operate all existing telegraph lines. And Western Union fought every move toward government control, publishing countless pamphlets in its own defense and lobbying vigorously in Washington.
Surely by no accident, a key speaker at Delmonico’s was William Orton, the tall, dignified president of Western Union. No one had been more energetic than he in speechmaking and testifying before congressional committees to oppose plans for federal intervention. In addressing the banqueters he attacked such plans as unconstitutional, amounting to government interference with free enterprise. “The American telegraph is on its trial,” he said, “and it feels honored on this occasion that that trial is in the presence of the Chief-Justice of the United States … and the distinguished Attorney-General of the United States.”
When Morse rose to speak, introduced by Chief Justice Chase, the two hundred guests stood up to give cheer after cheer. When the applause subsided a little it broke out again and again. He spoke for at least an hour, mostly explaining once more the grounds of his and America’s claims to priority. But indirectly he also addressed the issue of government control, by relating his experiences with Congress a quarter century ago. When he applied for an appropriation to erect an experimental line, he recalled, some House members ridiculed