“There is an underhand intrigue against my telegraph interests in Virginia, fostered by a friend turned enemy in the hope to better his own interests, a man whom I have ever treated as a friend while I had the governmental patronage to bestow, and gave him office in Baltimore.  Having no more of patronage to give I have no more friendship from him.  Mr. R. has proved himself false, notwithstanding his naming his son after me as a proof of friendship.”

The Mr. R. referred to was Henry J. Rogers, and, writing of him to Vail on April 26, Morse says:  “I am truly grieved at Rogers’s conduct.  He must be conscious of doing great injustice; for a man that has wronged another is sure to invent some cause for his act if there has been none given.  In this case he endeavors to excuse his selfish and injurious acts by the false assertion that ‘I had cast him overboard.’  Why, what does he mean?  Was I not overboard myself?  Does he or anyone else suppose I have nothing else to do than to find them places, and not only intercede for them, which in Rogers’s case and Zantziger’s I have constantly and perseveringly done to the present hour, but I am bound to force the companies, over which I have no control, to take them at any rate, on the penalty of being traduced and injured by them if they do not get the office they seek?  As to Rogers, you know my feelings towards him and his.  I had received him as a friend, not as a mere employee, and let no opportunity pass without urging forward his interests.  I recollected his naming his son for me, and had determined, if the wealth actually came which has been predicted to me, that that child should be remembered.”

Always desirous of being just and merciful, Morse writes to Vail on May 1:  “Rogers is here.  I have had a good deal of conversation with him, and the result is that I think that some circumstances which seemed to inculpate him are explicable on other grounds than intention to injure us.”

But he was finally forced to give him up, for on August 7 he writes:  “You cannot tell how pained I am at being compelled to change my opinion of R. Your feelings correspond entirely with my own.  I was hoping to do something gratifying to him and his family, and soon should have done it if he would permit it; but no!  The mask of friendship covered a deep selfishness that scrupled not to sacrifice a real friendship to a shortsighted and overreaching ambition.  Let him go.  I wished to befriend him and his, and would have done so from the heart, but as he cannot trust me I have enough who can and do.”

The case of Rogers was typical, and I have, therefore, given it in some detail.  It was always a source of grief to Morse when men, whom in his large-hearted way he had admitted to his intimacy, turned against him; and he was called upon to suffer many such blows.  He has been accused of having quarrelled with all his associates.  This, of course, is not true, for we have only to name Vail, and Gale, and Kendall, and Reid, and a host of others to prove the contrary.  But, like all men who have achieved great things, he made bitter enemies, some of whom at first professed sincere friendship for him and were implicitly trusted by him.  However, a dispassionate study of all the circumstances leading up to the rupture of these friendly ties will prove that, in practically every case he was sinned against, not sinning.