“I feel, Professor Morse, that, if I am ever worth anything, it will be wholly attributable to your kindness.  I now should have no earthly prospect of happiness and domestic bliss had it not been for what you have done.  For which I shall ever remember [you] with the liveliest emotions of gratitude, whether it is eventually successful or not.”

Aside from the slight friction to which I have referred, and which was most excusable under the circumstances, the joint work on the telegraph proceeded harmoniously.  The invitation from Mr. Patterson, to exhibit the instrument before the Committee of Science and Arts of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, was accepted.  The exhibition took place on February 8, and was a pronounced success, and the committee, in expressing their gratification, voiced the hope that the Government would provide the funds for an experiment on an adequate scale.

From Philadelphia Morse proceeded to Washington accompanied by Vail, confidently believing that it would only be necessary to demonstrate the practicability of his invention to the country’s legislators assembled in Congress, in order to obtain a generous appropriation to enable him properly to test it.  But he had not taken into account that trait of human nature which I shall dignify by calling it “conservatism,” in order not to give it a harder name.

The room of the Committee on Commerce was placed at his disposal, and there he hopefully strung his ten miles of wire and connected them with his instruments.  Outwardly calm but inwardly nervous and excited, as he realized that he was facing a supreme moment in his career, he patiently explained to all who came, Congressmen, men of science, representatives of foreign governments, and hard-headed men of business, the workings of the instrument and proved its feasibility.  The majority saw and wondered, but went away unconvinced.  On February 21, President Martin Van Buren and his entire Cabinet, at their own special request, visited the room and saw the telegraph in operation.  But no action was taken by Congress; the time was not yet ripe for the general acceptance of such a revolutionary departure from the slow-going methods of that early period.  While individuals here and there grasped the full significance of what the mysterious ticking of that curious instrument foretold, they were vastly in the minority.  The world, through its representatives in the capital city of the United States, remained incredulous.

Among those who at once recognized the possibilities of the invention was Francis O.J.  Smith, member of Congress from Portland, Maine, and chairman of the Committee on Commerce.  He was a lawyer of much shrewdness and a man of great energy, and he very soon offered to become pecuniarily interested in the invention.  Morse was, unfortunately, not a keen judge of men.  Scrupulously honest and honorable himself, he had an almost childlike faith in the integrity of others, and all through his life