“He that has improved the virtue or advanced the happiness of one fellow-creature, he that has ascertained a single moral proposition, or added one useful experiment to natural knowledge, may be contented with his own performance, and, with respect to mortals like himself, may demand, like Augustus, to be dismissed at his departure with applause.”—Dr. Johnson.
The fate of inventors has been one of the enigmas of history. Lord Bacon has praised the justness of antiquity in awarding divine honours to inventors whose benefits might extend to the whole human race, while only heroic honours were awarded to statesmen who benefited only particular places. But even in antiquity the honours paid to inventors were generally posthumous. Horace wrote that
And a later Roman writer endeavoured to explain this anomalous treatment by stating that “we envy the living by whose merit we think ourselves overwhelmed, but we venerate departed merit because we are edified by it.” Human nature has not changed much since the Augustan age; but in nothing perhaps has public feeling in our own time undergone such a revolution as in respect to inventors. Some may think that this change can be accounted for by the greatness of the benefits which inventors have wrought in our day. But there have been great inventors before now. “If one looks back,” says Mr. J. L. Ricardo, “to the times when the most important inventions were produced, it appears they were all made without even a patent, so far as we can discover. For instance, arithmetic, writing, and all the first great inventions, to which we are so habituated that we scarce think they have been invented any more than the flowers or trees, yet were mighty inventions in their time. Paper was invented in the year 1200, oil painting in the year 1297, glass in 1310, printing in 1430, and gunpowder in 1450. All these inventions, or very many of them, were made by men without artificial stimulus, often at the peril of their lives, when their reward was not a monopoly, but perhaps the stake or the gibbet.” It may be observed, however, that most of these “great inventions” might more accurately be described as the result of the discovery of natural laws, and hence they were generally ascribed to alchemy or sorcery; whereas in our day the inventions that have been most beneficial have been of a mechanical description. There is scarcely a machine now in use that is not an invention of modern times; and while many of the discoveries, called inventions, of former ages were made accidentally, who would ever think of saying that the complicated machinery in use nowadays was invented by accident? Obviously it has been the result of labour, skill, and knowledge; and its effect is to save labour and supersede skill. It is probably the greater effort required in the production of modern machinery, and its obvious utility when in operation, that have secured for inventors an honourable place in public estimation, as well as more adequate remuneration for their services. At all events such was the case with the Morse telegraph.
Not that its success was unalloyed with detraction. After its utility was fully established, one company after another contested its originality or the validity of his patent rights, which had consequently to be protected by costly law suits. The first of these took place at Louisville, Kentucky, in August, 1848. The owners of the Morse system arranged to construct a line from that town to Nashville, Tennessee; and Henry O’Reilly, supported by a company, constructed a rival line, and called it the People’s Line, which they at first tried to work by a piece of electrical apparatus that was only a modification of the Morse system, the principle of which they contended they were justified in using on the ground that it did not originate with Morse. After a patent trial of the case, the court granted an injunction against the O’Reilly Company, and sustained the validity of the Morse patent. The Supreme Court of the United States, on appeal, confirmed this decision in January, 1854. The court held it as established by evidence that “early in the spring of 1837 Morse invented his plan for combining two or more electric or galvanic circuits, with independent batteries, for the purpose of overcoming the diminished force of electro-magnetism in long circuits, that there is reasonable ground for believing that he had so far completed his invention that the whole process, combination, powers, and machinery were arranged in his mind, and that the delay in bringing it out arose from want of means.” The court also held that “neither the inquiries Morse made nor the information or advice he received from men of science, in the course of his researches, impair his right to the character of an inventor. No invention can possibly be made, consisting of a combination of different elements of power, without a thorough knowledge of the properties of each of them, and the mode in which they operate upon each other. A very high degree of scientific knowledge and the nicest skill in the mechanic arts are combined in the electro-magnetic telegraph and were necessary to bring it into successful operation. It is the high praise of Professor Morse that he has been able by a new combination of known powers, of which electro-magnetism is one, to discover a method by which intelligible marks or signs may be printed at a distance.” Such were the sort of compliments that the Supreme Court bestowed upon Professor Morse, while they amply vindicated the validity of his patents.
Another case was heard at Philadelphia in September, 1851. It was an action brought by the Magnetic Telegraph Company, who used the Morse patent, against Henry J. Rogers and others who worked a line of telegraph from Washington to New York on the system of Alexander Bain. This ingenious but unlucky invention, which Mr. Bain made in 1846, was represented as capable of transmitting from 1,000 to 2,000 letters a minute. By means of a machine, holes were stamped in a long strip of paper, and each hole or group of holes represented a particular letter. The paper was coiled on a wooden roller, from which it passed to a metal roller; the mechanism was so arranged that two metallic points underneath the paper passed through the holes as they moved along, and thus touching the metal of the roller, imparted sufficient electricity to make a signal at the distant end of the wire; but when the points only touched the paper no electricity passed. This rapid alternation was made to indicate signals. In the recipient apparatus, which marked the signals at the distant end of the connecting wire, the strip of paper used was first soaked in dilute sulphuric acid, and then in a solution of prussiate of potash; two metallic points pressed on that paper, and when electricity passed through these points, it discoloured the chemically prepared paper and left a number of dark spots on it; but when no electricity passed no spots were produced. In America it was alleged that those who used this apparatus violated Morse’s patent by forming their alphabet and figures (though using chemicals instead of ink) in the same way that Morse did—by dots and lines, although the same dots and lines did not in both systems represent the same letter or figure. The claim of Professor Morse as the inventor of the principle of the dot and dash alphabet was consequently disputed by the defendants. But the judges held that there was no one person whose invention had been spoken of by witnesses or referred to in any book as involving the principle of Morse’s discovery but must yield precedence to him, and that neither Steinheil, nor Cooke and Wheatstone, nor Davy, nor Dyer, nor Henry had, when the Morse invention was consummated early in the spring of 1837, made a recording telegraph of any sort. In this case the evidence filled over a thousand printed pages; and in other trials the evidence filled many hundreds of pages.
Only in one case did a rival inventor establish valid claims to originality. This was Mr. Royal E. House, the inventor of the printing telegraph, which was described in 1851, when it came into use, as one of the wonders of the age. He invented a machine which, when a message was transmitted by electric currents over a single wire, printed the words in Roman letters that any person could read. For that invention House applied for a patent in 1846, but was refused it on the ground that his specification in some points clashed with that of Morse. It was not till towards the end of 1848 that he got a patent which dated from April, 1846. He was a self-taught man, who was confined to his dwelling-house with an affection of the eyes during most of the six years that he had been engaged in constructing his instrument. The sending apparatus for despatching messages resembled a pianette, in which each key represented a letter of the alphabet, and the sender had simply to press down the key representing any desired letter, and the receiving apparatus at the other end of the telegraph wire printed that letter on a strip of paper. The electric current moved a wheel around the edge of which were the letters of the alphabet in type properly inked; and when the particular letter desired came round to the point nearest the paper tape, the letter was by self-acting mechanism pressed against it, causing the letter to be printed on the tape. It was stated that 160 letters could be transmitted and printed in that way in a minute. The first line of telegraph worked by the House apparatus was completed in August, 1850, by the Boston and New York Telegraph Company. Proceedings were at once taken against that company by the owner of the Morse patent, of which the House apparatus was alleged to be an infringement. Judge Woodbury, after hearing much evidence and argument, came to the conclusion that the two methods of telegraphing differed as much as writing differed from printing. He said the Morse apparatus was less complicated and more easily comprehended; it could be readily understood by most mechanics and men of science; while the House machine was so much more difficult to comprehend in its operations that it required days, if not weeks, to master it. At the same time he declared that House had given “letters to lightning,” as well as “lightning to letters.” While he admitted that the principle of the House telegraph was not new, although now ingeniously applied and worked by a new power, he gave Morse every credit for originality in his invention, and decided in the end that the one was not an infringement of the other.
The Morse alphabet, the originality of which was practically undisputed, has not only been found universally useful for telegraphic purposes, but has been successfully used for signalling intelligence where no electric telegraph was available. Its characters have been exhibited from lighthouses in long and short flashes of electric light to tell the lonely mariner in the darkness of night the name of the coast he was passing; while in lands where the electric telegraph is unknown it has enabled a revival of the old semaphore system to be worked with great advantages. When the British squadron entered Burmah in the end of 1885, communication was kept up between the different portions of the forces by means of the heliostat and heliograph, sun-signalling instruments, which displayed to distant stations dots or dashes of light forming the Morse alphabet. In the heliograph the signalling was effected by altering the angle of the mirror which reflected the light; while in the heliostat the requisite flash was transmitted by opening temporarily a shutter, which when shut obscured the light. The Morse alphabet thus enables distant stations to speak by means of light as well as electricity.
At the time when the laying of the Atlantic cable was absorbing public attention, Professor Morse was enjoying the fruits of his previous labours. Rewards and honours were freely bestowed on him. During his long and often disheartening struggle with adversity, he was not without honour in his own and in other countries. In 1835 he was elected a corresponding member of the Historical Institute of France; in 1837 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Belgium; in 1839 he received the great silver medal of the Paris Academy of Industry for his invention of the telegraph; in 1841 he was made a corresponding member of the Washington Institute for the Promotion of Science; in 1842 he was awarded the gold medal of the American Institute for his experiments demonstrating submarine telegraphy; in 1845 he was made a corresponding member of the Archæological Society of Belgium; in 1847 he was made an honorary Doctor of Laws of Yale College; in 1849 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, and so on.
What he wanted during these years was emolument, and now that had come to him after long years of patient expectation. Though his patent was not put in profitable operation till 1846, he received before the date of its expiration, 1854, a sum of 90,874 dollars, and during the seven following years, for which it was renewed, over 70,000 dollars. His fame had now become world-wide, and foreign honours were bestowed upon him by the chief European sovereigns. In June, 1856, he visited England, and was delighted to meet once more with several of his old artist friends: men who had befriended him when in humble circumstances he showed a special pleasure in meeting now, when he had attained pre-eminent success in another vocation. From London he proceeded to Copenhagen, where the King of Denmark, Frederick VII., presented him with the Cross of a Knight of the Danneborg. He was thence invited to Russia by the Emperor Alexander II., who sent his carriage to convey him from the quay on landing to the Imperial Palace, where he was treated as an honoured guest. Then he went to Berlin, where he again met the author of the Cosmos, Alexander von Humboldt, who entertained him hospitably, and presented him with a portrait of himself on the margin of which he had written as an inscription the homage of his high and affectionate esteem for Mr. S. F. B. Morse, “whose philosophical and useful labours have rendered his name illustrious in two worlds.” Returning to London in September, he was next month entertained at a public banquet in the Albion Tavern on the same day that he received the announcement that the Emperor Napoleon had made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. At that banquet Mr. W. F. Cooke stated that Professor Morse stood alone in America as the originator and carrier out of a grand conception; but that not content with giving the benefit of his conception to his own country and Canada, he threatened to go still further, and, if Englishmen would not do it, to carry telegraphic communication across the Atlantic. Dr. O’Shaughnessy stated at the banquet that he had made a journey from India to England in order to introduce into India the system of telegraphing which had been perfected by Professor Morse. It was this gentleman who, according to his own statement, erected in April and May, 1839, “the first long line of telegraph ever constructed in any country” in the vicinity of Calcutta. His line was twenty-one miles long, and included 7,000 feet of river circuit. In after years he was accustomed to state that it was the experiments performed on that line which removed all reasonable doubts regarding the practicability of working electric telegraphs through enormous distances,—“a question then and for three years later disputed by high authorities, and regarded generally with contemptuous scepticism.” After the experiments were completed and published, the line was taken down. It may therefore be said of Dr. O’Shaughnessy that he was in a double sense the father of Indian telegraphy, and as such he received the honour of knighthood.
It thus appears that the three men who were the pioneers in practical telegraphy were Morse in America, Wheatstone in England, and O’Shaughnessy in India. In after ages it may be a question of biographical interest whether these three men, whose triumphs took place in scenes so far apart, ever met together. A similar question has been asked of another constellation of great men. “It is a remarkable fact,” says Sir David Brewster, “in the history of astronomy, that three of its most distinguished professors were contemporaries. Galileo was the contemporary of Tycho during thirty-seven years and of Kepler during fifty-nine years of his life. Galileo was born seven years before Kepler, and survived him nearly the same time. We have not learned that the intellectual triumvirate of the age enjoyed any opportunity of mutual congratulation. What a privilege it would have been to have contrasted the aristocratic dignity of Tycho with the reckless ease of Kepler, and the manly and impetuous mien of the Italian sage.” It is possible that three or four centuries hence similar speculations may be indulged in with respect to the group of remarkable men who made the electric telegraph a practical success in different parts of the world. It may therefore be worth while here to state that there is no record of Professor Wheatstone and Professor Morse ever having met personally either for mutual congratulation or recrimination. In several respects they were men of like qualities—modest, unselfish, persevering, versatile, and ingenious in everything except extemporaneous public speaking—a similitude which might perhaps be held to account for the fact that there was no love lost between them, if it be true, as Saint Pierre contends, that men are more attached to those qualities that are the complement of their own than to those that are the counterpart of their own—an observation that would not apply to the three professors of astronomy. Anyhow, the absence of Professor Wheatstone from the banquet given to Professor Morse in London in 1856 was publicly commented on at the time in the leading English journal, to which a member of the committee wrote, in reply, that “it was intended to pay all honour to Professor Wheatstone, but to the regret of every one at the dinner he was unable to attend: his pre-eminent merits as an electrical engineer were repeatedly acknowledged during the evening, and always with the warmest reception by the whole company.” Nevertheless, in the calm perspective of history posterity will probably regard that opportunity for mutual congratulation as a privilege that ought not to have been lost.
Professor Morse said in 1856 that it was not in England alone that he had experienced unwonted kindness, but in every place he had visited,—in Copenhagen, in St. Petersburgh, in Berlin, throughout Germany, Belgium, France, he had everywhere received distinguished marks of regard—and that he was unable to recall a single unpleasant occurrence to mar the gratifying impression which he carried with him to his Transatlantic home. The first foreign honour he received as an acknowledgment of his invention came from the Sultan of Turkey, who sent him the decoration, set in diamonds, of the Order of Glory, and this was the first decoration which the Sultan conferred on an American citizen. Italy bestowed on him the Cross of a Knight of Saints Lazaro and Mauritio; Prussia the Gold Medal of Scientific Merit in a gold snuff-box; Spain the Cross of Knight Commander de Numero of the Order of Isabella; Austria the Gold Medal of Scientific Merit; and Portugal the Cross of a Knight of the Tower and Sword.
In 1858 he again left New York and went to Paris, where his fellow-countrymen entertained him at a banquet. A movement was then set on foot to make him some recompense for the use of his invention in Europe. At a conference of delegates of ten leading Governments, held in Paris to consider the subject, Count Walewski said that the honorary distinctions which several sovereigns had conferred on Professor Morse had beyond doubt been appreciated by him as valuable marks of high esteem; but these had been insufficient to supply the place of the pecuniary compensation which his sacrifices and his labours seemed destined to procure him, and which were so much the more justly called for, since electro-magnetic telegraphing,—independently of the immense services which it renders by the rapidity of transmitting news and correspondence,—also brings to the Governments that have a monopoly of it profits in money which are already considerable, and must continue to increase. With a conviction that there was justice as well as generosity in acceding to the claim of Mr. Morse, who was now subject to the infirmities of age, after devoting the whole of his small fortune to the experiments and voyages necessary to arrive at the discovery and application of his process, the Emperor’s Government had solicited the various States, to whose gratitude Professor Morse had a right, to contribute to the remuneration due to him. It was agreed that the different Governments should contribute in proportion to the number of instruments that they had in use; and it was found that they had altogether 1,284 Morse instruments in operation, of which France had the highest number, namely 462. On September 1st, 1858, Count Walewski addressed to him the following letter from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs:—“I have the honour to announce with lively satisfaction that a sum of 400,000 francs will be remitted to you in four annuities, in the name of France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, the Holy See, Sweden, Tuscany, and Turkey, as an honorary gratuity, and as a reward, altogether personal, of your useful labours. Nothing can better mark than this collective act of reward the sentiment of public gratitude which your invention has so justly excited. The Emperor had already given you a testimonial of his high esteem when he conferred on you, more than a year ago, the decoration of a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. You will find a new mark of it in the initiative which His Majesty wished that his Government should take on this occasion, and the announcement I now make to you is a brilliant proof of the eager and sympathetic response that his proposition has met with from the States I have just enumerated.”
The latter years of the Professor’s life were mostly spent in retirement at his country residence—a delightful house, near Poughkeepsie, on the eastern bank of the Hudson, where he appeared to possess everything that could promote his comfort or gratify his taste. It was an Italian villa, called Locust Grove, surrounded by very picturesque grounds containing deep ravines and lofty forest trees. Here he cultivated beautiful gardens, and adorned the spot with all the chasteness of an artist’s taste. Here he was surrounded by a lively and affectionate family. Here he delighted to entertain his old friends with accounts of his early struggles and disappointments. Here he was placed in communication with the busy world of work and thought by means of the agency which his own genius had created—the Morse telegraph. But here, amid the repose of Nature, he was not idle. In the sunshine of fortune and fame he was as sympathetic and kind as when under the chilly blasts of adversity. He knew well that
Much of his leisure time was spent in assisting struggling inventors and artists, and in doing works of charity. He purposely devoted one-tenth of his income to Christian benevolence, and in honour of his father he gave 10,000 dollars as an endowment for a Morse lectureship on the relation of the Bible to the sciences. Occasionally he was drawn from his retirement to receive some tribute of respect from his fellow-countrymen; for in his own country where no titles or decorations are conferred, the sunset of his useful life was made radiant by some exceptional marks of public favour.
On the eve of the last day of 1868 he was entertained at a public banquet in Delmonico’s, New York, when some of the most eminent men in the United States paid high tributes to his genius. In the toast of “Our Guest,” Professor Morse was described as the man of science who explored the laws of Nature, wrested electricity from her embrace, and made it a missionary in the cause of human progress. Professor Morse was as rich in humility as his admirers were in eulogy. He said that, in tracing the birth and pedigree of the American telegraph, “American is not the highest term of the series that connects the past with the present. There is at least one higher term,—the highest of all,—which cannot and must not be ignored. If not a sparrow falls to the ground without a definite purpose in the plans of Infinite Wisdom, can the creation of an instrument so vitally affecting the interests of the whole human race have an origin less humble than the Father of every good and perfect gift? I am sure I have the sympathy of such an assembly as is here gathered together, if in all humility, and in the sincerity of a grateful heart, I use the words of Inspiration in ascribing honour and praise to Him to whom first of all and most of all it is pre-eminently due. ‘Not unto us, not unto us, but to God be all the glory’—not what hath man, but ‘what hath God wrought?’”
In April, 1870, it was announced in the public press that the telegraph operators of the United States intended to raise a memorial of the father of their craft, and from all parts of civilised America subscriptions for that purpose were sent to the executive committee, of which Mr. Jas. D. Reid was the chairman. When, six months afterward, information of the movement was officially communicated to the aged Professor, he replied:—“I am astonished and deeply impressed with the evidence of such an unexampled universality of kind and friendly feeling from those whom I have loved to call my children. I know by early experience some of their trials, and can therefore sympathise with them; and I should be false to my convictions if to those who have called me Father, I should be recreant in manifesting my grateful thanks for their expressed sentiments of affection and respect.”
A bronze statue of him on a granite pedestal was erected in the Central Park, New York, and was unveiled on June 10th, 1871, in the presence of a vast multitude, by the Governor of Massachusetts, the State in which the venerable inventor was born eighty years previously.
In the course of a long and eloquent address, Mr. Cullen Bryant observed that it might be said that “the civilised world is already full of memorials which speak the merit of our friend and the grandeur and utility of his invention. Every telegraphic station is such a memorial; every message sent from one of these stations to another may be counted among the honours paid to his name. Every telegraphic wire, strung from post to post, as it hums in the wind murmurs his eulogy. But we are so constituted that we insist upon seeing the form of that brow beneath which an active, restless, creative brain devised the mechanism that was to subdue the most wayward of the elements to the service of man, and make it his obedient messenger. We require to see the eye that glittered with a thousand lofty hopes when the great discovery was made, and the lips that curled with a smile of triumph when it became certain that the lightning of the clouds would become tractable to the most delicate touch. We demand to see the hand which first strung the wire by whose means the slender currents of the electric fluid were taught the alphabet of every living language—the hand which pointed them to the spot where they were to inscribe and leave their messages. All this we have in the statue which has this day been unveiled to the eager gaze of the public, and in which the artist has so skilfully and faithfully fulfilled his task as to satisfy those who are the hardest to please—the most intimate friends of the original. On behalf of the telegraphic workers of the Continent, who have so nobly and affectionately provided it, I do now present it to the authorities of the city of New York for perpetual and loving care.” In accepting it, Mayor Hall said:—“Our Middle State city loves to remember how her citizen Franklin modestly passed the portals of the temple of electrical science; a southern city how her citizen Whitney developed a cotton empire; a western city how her citizen McCormick presented to agriculture its greatest boon; adjacent eastern cities gratefully recall how their citizens Morton and Jackson blessed humanity, and how Elias Howe lightened the toil of the poor. The genius of these Americans changed the atmosphere of social life, which now is not in any aspect the same as it was to the elder generation of this Union. Their genius blessed food, raiment, and locomotion. But New York cherishes more proudly and gratefully the thought that the genius of her citizen Morse put all these inventions into world-wide service, and is fast bringing together all the peoples who were dispersed at the Tower of Babel.”
The venerable Professor also delivered a lengthy speech, during which he said that the subscribers had “chosen to impersonate in my humble effigy an invention which, cradled upon the ocean, had its birth in an American ship. It was nursed and cherished not so much from personal as from patriotic pride. Forecasting its future, even at its birth, my most powerful stimulus to perseverance through all the perils and trials of its early days—and they were neither few nor insignificant—was the thought that it must inevitably be world-wide in its application, and, moreover, that it would everywhere be hailed as a grateful American gift to the nations. It is in this aspect of the present occasion that I look upon your proceeding as intended, not so much as homage to an individual as to the invention ‘whose lines,’ from America, ‘have gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.’... It is but a few days since, that our veritable antipodes became telegraphically united to us. We can speak to and receive an answer in a few seconds of time from Hong Kong in China, where 10 o’clock to-night here is 10 o’clock in the day there, and it is perhaps a debatable question whether their 10 o’clock is 10 to-day or 10 to-morrow. China and New York are in interlocutory communication. We know the fact, but can imagination realise it?”
At a public meeting held in the evening in the Academy of Music a unique incident occurred. At 9 o’clock all the telegraph wires in America, then measuring over 180,000 miles, with 6,000 stations, were so connected together as to be in communication with a single Morse instrument which stood on a table visible to the large audience present. By means of this instrument the following message was transmitted to all the stations:—“Greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity throughout the land. Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will to men.” These words were transmitted by an expert lady operator, and then Professor Morse stepped forward to the instrument, and moved the handle so as to transmit the letters S. F. B. Morse, a proceeding which evoked enthusiastic applause. Mr. W. Orton, who presided, said: “Thus the Father of the Telegraph bids farewell to his children.” The Professor afterwards delivered a long address, recounting the chief events in the early history of his invention.
His continued interest and faith in the telegraph was evinced by a characteristic letter, which he wrote on December 4th, 1871, to Mr. Cyrus Field, who was then attending a Telegraphic Convention in Rome. He said:—“The excitement occasioned by the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis has but just ceased, and I have been wholly engrossed by the various duties connected with his presence. I have wished for a few calm moments to put on paper some thoughts respecting the doings of the great Telegraphic Convention to which you are a delegate. The telegraph has now assumed such a marvellous position in human affairs throughout the world; its influences are so great and important in all the varied concerns of nations, that its efficient protection from injury has become a necessity. It is a powerful advocate for universal peace. Not that of itself it can command a ‘Peace, be still,’ to the angry waves of human passions, but that by its rapid interchange of thought and opinion it gives the opportunity of explanations to acts and to laws which in their ordinary wording often create doubt and suspicion. Were there no means of quick explanation, it is readily seen that doubt and suspicion, working on the susceptibilities of the public mind, would engender misconception, hatred, and strife. How important, then, that in the intercourse of nations there should be the ready means at hand for prompt correction and explanation! Could there not be passed in the great International Convention some resolution to the effect that in whatever condition, whether of peace or war between nations, the telegraph should be deemed a sacred thing, to be by common consent effectually protected, both on land and beneath the waters? In the interest of human happiness, of that ‘Peace on earth’ which, in announcing the advent of the Saviour, the angels proclaimed, with ‘good will to men,’ I hope that the Convention will not adjourn without adopting a resolution asking of the nations their united effective protection to this great agent of civilisation. The mode and terms of such resolution may be safely left to the intelligent members of the honourable and distinguished Convention.” The reading of this letter in the Convention was hailed with prolonged cheers for the writer of it, and the letter was ordered to be printed among the records of the Convention.
The death of his brother Sidney, a few days later, affected him very much, and it then became evident that his own life was ebbing away. While in this state he was asked to unveil a bronze statue of Franklin, which Captain Albert de Groot had presented to the printers of New York, and which was erected in front of the City Hall. Though confined to bed when asked to unveil this statue, the Professor said he would do it if he had to be lifted to the spot; and when he was introduced to the vast concourse of people present at the ceremony as “the distinguished inventor and pride of our country,” he stated that no one had more reason to venerate the name of Franklin than himself, and expressed a hope that Franklin’s illustrious example of devotion to the interest of universal humanity might be the seed of further fruit for the good of the world. Mr. Horace Greeley said that Professor Morse seemed to have been raised up by Providence to be the continuer of the great work of which Franklin was the beginner.
His exposure to the keen breeze blowing when he unveiled the Franklin statue aggravated the neuralgia in his head, from which he suffered intense pain. He gradually sank, and distracting pain was followed by stupor. The Rev. Dr. Adams, of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York, of which the Professor was a member, attended him in his illness, and afterwards gave the following account of his last days:—“A short time ago he was occupied with other fellow-citizens in acts of attention to a distinguished representative of the Royal House of Russia. At the Holy Communion of this church next ensuing, an occasion in which for domestic and personal reasons he felt an extraordinary interest, at the close of the service he approached me with more than usual warmth and pressure of the hand, and, with a beaming countenance, said: ‘Oh, this is something better and greater than standing before princes.’ His piety had the simplicity of childhood. When his brother Sidney died last Christmas, he began to die also. Through fear of exciting alarm and giving distress to his own household, he did not speak so much to them as to some others, of his expected departure, but he used to say familiarly to some with whom he was ready to converse upon this subject, ‘I love to be studying the Guide Book of the country to which I am going; I wish to know more and more about it.’ A few days before his decease, in the privacy of his chamber I spoke to him of the great goodness of God to him in his remarkable life. ‘Yes; so good, so good,’ was the quick response; ‘and the best part of all is yet to come.’ Though spared more than eighty years, he saw none of the infirmities of age, either of mind or body. His delicate taste, his love for the beautiful, his fondness for the fine arts, his sound judgment, his intellectual activities, his public spirit, his intense interest in all that concerned the welfare and the decoration of the city, his earnest advocacy of Christian liberty throughout the world—all continued unimpaired to the last. With perfect health and the full possession of every faculty, urbane and courteous to all who knew him, there was no infelicity of temper or manner such as sometimes befalls extreme age. Surrounded by a young family, he was their genial friend and companion as well as head, sympathising in all the simple and innocent pleasures that give the charms to home. In particular qualities he had many equals and superiors, but in that rare combination of qualities which, like the harmony of colours in the finished picture, made him what he was, he seems to have been unrivalled.”—On the 2nd of April, 1872,
His remains were interred in Greenwood Cemetery three days after his death. The funeral service was held in Madison Square Presbyterian Church, and the funeral was attended by representatives of the leading telegraph companies in New York, of the Academy of Design, of the Evangelical Alliance, the Chamber of Commerce, the Association for the Advancement of Science and Art, and other public bodies. In the House of Representatives a concurrent resolution was passed recording profound regret at the death of “Professor Morse, whose distinguished and varied abilities have contributed more than those of any other person to the development and progress of the practical arts,” and declaring that his purity of life, his loftiness of scientific aim, and his resolute faith in truth, rendered it highly proper that the Representatives and Senators should solemnly testify to his worth and greatness. Mr. Wood, of New York city, being the only member then in the House who voted in 1843 for the bill for the experimental telegraph line, gave a sketch of the measure which enabled Professor Morse to bring his invention to a practical test. Other admirers paid their tributes of respect in verses, such as the following:—