In the spring of 1855, Morse, in a letter to his friend and relative by marriage, Thomas R. Walker, of Utica, writes enthusiastically of the future:  “Our Atlantic line is in a fair way.  We have the governments and capitalists of Europe zealously and warmly engaged to carry it through. Three years will not pass before a submarine telegraph communication will be had with Europe, and I do not despair of sitting in my office and, by a touch of the telegraph-key, asking a question simultaneously to persons in London, Paris, Cairo, Calcutta, and Canton, and getting the answer from all of them in five minutes after the question is asked.  Does this seem strange?  I presume if I had even suggested the thought some twenty years ago, I might have had a quiet residence in a big building in your vicinity.”

The first part of this prophecy was actually realized, for in 1858, just three years after the date of this letter, communication was established between the two continents and was maintained for twenty days.  Then it suddenly and mysteriously ceased, and not till 1866 was the indomitable perseverance of Cyrus Field crowned with permanent success.

More of the details of this stupendous undertaking will be told in the proper chronological order, but before leaving the letter to Mr. Walker, just quoted from, I wish to note that when Morse speaks of sitting in his office and communicating by a touch of the key with the outside world, he refers to the fact that the telegraph companies with which he was connected had obligingly run a short line from the main line (which at that time was erected along the highway from New York to Albany) into his office at Locust Grove, Poughkeepsie, so that he was literally in touch with every place of any importance in the United States.

Always solicitous for the welfare of mankind in general, he says in a letter to Norvin Green, in July, 1855, after discussing the proposed cable:  “The effects of the Telegraph on the interests of the world, political, social and commercial have, as yet, scarcely begun to be apprehended, even by the most speculative minds.  I trust that one of its effects will be to bind man to his fellow-man in such bonds of amity as to put an end to war.  I think I can predict this effect as in a not distant future.”

Alas! in this he did not prove himself a true prophet, although it must be conceded that many wars have been averted or shortened by means of the telegraph, and there are some who hope that a warless age is even now being conceived in the womb of time.

On July 18, 1855, he writes to his good friend Dr. Gale:  “I have no time to add, as every moment is needed to prepare for my Newfoundland expedition, to be present at laying down the first submarine cable of any considerable length on this side the water, although the first for telegraph purposes, you well remember, we laid between Castle Garden and Governor’s Island in 1842.”