Chapter VII: Seeking Aid From Congress

When Mr. Field reached home from abroad, he hoped for a brief respite. He had had a pretty hard campaign during the summer and autumn in England, and needed at least a few weeks of rest; but that was denied him. He landed in New York on Christmas Day, and was not allowed even to spend the New Year with his family. There were interests of the Company in Newfoundland which required immediate attention, and it was important that one of the Directors should go there without delay. As usual, it devolved upon him. He left at once for Boston, where he took the steamer to Halifax, and thence to St. John's. Such a voyage may be very agreeable in summer, but in mid-winter it is not a pleasant thing to face the storms of those northern latitudes. The passage was unusually tempestuous. At St. John's he broke down, and was put under the care of a physician. But he did not stop to think of himself. The work for which he came was done; and though the physician warned him that it was a great risk to leave his bed, he took the steamer on her return, and was again in New York after a month's absence--a month of hardship, of exposure, and of suffering, such as he had long occasion to remember.

The mention of this voyage came up a year afterward at a meeting of the Atlantic Telegraph Company in London, when a resolution was offered, tendering Mr. Field a vote of thanks for "the great services he had rendered to the Company by his untiring zeal, energy, and devotion." Mr. Brooking, the Vice-Chairman, had spent a large part of his life in Newfoundland, and knew the dangers of that inhospitable coast, and in seconding the resolution he said:

"It is now about a year and a half ago since I had the pleasure
of making the acquaintance of my friend Mr. Field. It was he
who initiated me into this Company, and induced me to take an
interest in it from its earliest stage. From that period to the
present I have observed in Mr. Field the most determined
perseverance, and the exercise of great talent, extraordinary
assiduity and diligence, coupled with an amount of fortitude
which has seldom been equalled. I have known him cross the
Atlantic in the depth of winter, and, within twenty-four hours
after his arrival in New York, having ascertained that his
presence was necessary in a distant British colony, he has not
hesitated at once to direct his course thitherward. That colony
is one with which I am intimately acquainted, having resided in
it for upward of twenty years, and am enabled to speak of the
hazards and danger which attend a voyage to it in winter. Mr.
Field no sooner arrived at New York, in the latter part of
December, than he got aboard a steamer for Halifax, and
proceeded to St. John's, Newfoundland. In three weeks he
accomplished there a very great object for this Company. He
procured the passage of an Act of the Legislature which has
given to our Company the right of establishing a footing on
those shores. [The rights before conferred, it would seem,
applied only to the Newfoundland Company.] That is only one of
the acts which he has performed with a desire to promote the
interests of this great enterprise."

The very next day after his return from Newfoundland, Mr. Field was called to Washington, to seek the aid of his own Government to the Atlantic Telegraph. The English Government had proffered the most generous aid, both in ships to lay the cable, and in an annual subsidy of L14,000. It was on every account desirable that this should be met by corresponding liberality on the part of the American Government. Before he left England, he had sent home the letter received from the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury; and thereupon the Directors of the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company had inclosed a copy to the President, with a letter asking for the same aid in ships, and in an annual sum of $70,000, [equivalent to L14,000,] to be paid for the government messages, the latter to be conditioned on the success of the telegraph, and to be continued only so long as it was in full operation. They urged with reason that the English Government had acted with great liberality--not only toward the enterprise, but toward our own Government. Although both ends of the line were in the British possessions, it had claimed no exclusive privileges, but had stipulated for perfect equality between the United States and Great Britain. The agreement expressly provided "that the British Government shall have a priority in the conveyance of their messages over all others, _subject to the exception only of the Government of the United States_, in the event of their entering into an arrangement with the Telegraph Company similar in principle to that of the British Government, in which case the messages of the two governments shall have priority in the order in which they arrive at the stations."

The letter to the President called attention to this generous offer--an offer which it was manifestly to the advantage of our Government to accept--and added: "The Company will enter into a contract with the Government of the United States on the same terms and conditions as it has made with the British Government." They asked only for the same recognition and aid which they had received in England. This surely was not a very bold request. It was natural that American citizens should think that in a work begun by Americans, and of which, if successful, their country would reap largely the honor and the advantage, they might expect the aid from their own Government which they had already received from a foreign power. It was, therefore, not without a mixture of surprise and mortification that they learned that the proposal in Congress had provoked a violent opposition, and that the bill was likely to be defeated. Such was the attitude of affairs when Mr. Field returned from Newfoundland, and which led him to hasten to Washington.

He now found that it was much easier to deal with the English than with the American Government. Whatever may be said of the respective methods of administration, it must be confessed that the forms of English procedure furnish greater facility in the despatch of business. A contract can be made by the Lords of the Treasury without waiting the action of Parliament. The proposal is referred to two or three intelligent officers of the Government--perhaps even to a single individual--on whose report it takes action without further delay. Thus it is probable that the action of the British Government was decided wholly by the recommendation of Mr. Wilson, formed after the visit of Mr. Field.

But in our country we do things differently. Here it would be considered a stretch of power for any administration to enter into a contract with a private company--a contract binding the Government for a period of twenty-five years, and involving an annual appropriation of money--without the action of Congress. This is a safeguard against reckless and extravagant expenditure, but, as one of the penalties we pay for our more popular form of government, in which every thing has to be referred to the people, it involves delay, and sometimes the defeat of wise and important public measures.

Besides--shall we confess it to our shame--another secret influence often appears in American legislation, which has defeated many an act demanded by the public good--the influence of the Lobby! This now began to show itself in opposition. It had been whispered in Washington that the gentlemen in New York who were at the head of this enterprise were very rich; and a measure coming from such a source surely ought to be made to pay tribute before it was allowed to pass. This was a new experience. Those few weeks in Washington were worse than being among the icebergs off the coast of Newfoundland. The Atlantic Cable has had many a kink since, but never did it seem to be entangled in such a hopeless twist as when it got among the politicians.

But it would be very unjust to suppose that there were no better influences in our Halls of Congress. There were then--as there have always been in our history--some men of large wisdom and of a noble patriotic pride, who in such a measure thought only of the good of their country and of the triumph of science and of civilization.

Two years after--in August, 1858--when the Atlantic Telegraph proved at last a reality, and the New World was full of its fame, Mr. Seward, in a speech at Auburn, thus referred to the ordeal it had to pass through in Congress:

"The two great countries of which I have spoken, [England and
America,] are now ringing with the praises of Cyrus W. Field,
who chiefly has brought this great enterprise to its glorious
and beneficent consummation. You have never heard his story;
let me give you a few points in it, as a lesson that there is
no condition of life in which a man, endowed with native
genius, a benevolent spirit, and a courageous patience, may not
become a benefactor of nations and of mankind."

After speaking of the efforts by which this New York merchant "brought into being an association of Americans and Englishmen, which contributed from surplus wealth the capital necessary as a basis for the enterprise"; he adds:

"It remained to engage the consent and the activity of the
Governments of Great Britain and the United States. That was
all that remained. Such consent and activity on the part of
some one great nation of Europe was all that remained needful
for Columbus when he stood ready to bring a new continent
forward as a theatre of the world's civilization. But in each
case that effort was the most difficult of all. Cyrus W. Field,
by assiduity and patience, first secured consent and
conditional engagement on the part of Great Britain, and then,
less than two years ago, he repaired to Washington. The
President and Secretary of State individually favored his
proposition; but the jealousies of parties and sections in
Congress forbade them to lend it their official sanction and
patronage. He appealed to me. I drew the necessary bill. With
the generous aid of others, Northern Representatives, and the
indispensable aid of the late Thomas J. Rusk, a Senator from
Texas, that bill, after a severe contest and long delay, was
carried through the Senate of the United States by the
majority, if I remember rightly, of one vote, and escaped
defeat in the House of Representatives with equal difficulty. I
have said the aid of Mr. Rusk was indispensable. If any one has
wondered why I, an extreme Northern man, loved and lamented
Thomas J. Rusk, an equally extreme Southern man, he has here an
explanation. There was no good thing which, as it seemed to me,
I could not do in Congress with his aid. When he died, it
seemed to me that no good thing could be done by any one. Such
was the position of Cyrus W. Field at that stage of the great
enterprise. But, thus at last fortified with capital derived
from New York and London, and with the navies of Great Britain
and the United States at his command, he has, after trials that
would have discouraged any other than a true discoverer,
brought the great work to a felicitous consummation. And now
the Queen of Great Britain and the President of the United
States stand waiting his permission to speak, and ready to
speak at his bidding; and the people of these two great
countries await only the signal from him to rush into a
fraternal embrace which will prove the oblivion of ages of
suspicion, of jealousies and of anger."

Mr. Seward might well refer with pride to the part he took in sustaining this enterprise. He was from the beginning its firmest supporter. The bill was introduced into the Senate by him, and was carried through mainly by his influence, seconded by Mr. Rusk, Mr. Douglas, and one or two others. It was introduced on the ninth of January, and came up for consideration on the twenty-first. Its friends had hoped that it might pass with entire unanimity. But such was the opposition, that the discussion lasted two days. The report shows that it was a subject of animated and almost angry debate, which brought out the secret of the opposition to aid being given by the Government.

Probably no measure was ever introduced in Congress for the help of any commercial enterprise, that some member, imagining that it was to benefit a particular section, did not object that it was "unconstitutional"! This objection was well answered in this case by Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, who asked:

"If we have a right to hire a warehouse at Port Mahon, in the
Mediterranean, for storing naval stores, have we not a right to
hire a company to carry our messages? I should as soon think of
questioning the constitutional power of the Government to pay
freight to a vessel for carrying its mail-bags across the
ocean, as to pay a telegraph company a certain sum per annum
for conveying its messages by the use of the electric
telegraph."

This touched the precise ground on which the appropriation was asked. In their memorial to the President, the Company had said: "Such a contract will, we suppose, fall within the provisions of the Constitution in regard to postal arrangements, of which this is only a new and improved form."

Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, explained in the same terms the nature of the proposed agreement:

"It is a mail operation. It is a Post-Office arrangement. It is
for the transmission of intelligence, and that is what I
understood to be the function of the Post-Office Department. I
hold it, therefore, to be as legitimately within the proper
powers of the Government, as the employing of a stage-coach, or
a steam-car, or a ship, to transport the mails, either to
foreign countries, or to different portions of our own
country."

Of course, as in all appropriations of money, the question of expense had to be considered, and here there were not wanting some to cry out against the extravagance of paying seventy thousand dollars a year! We had not then got used to the colossal expenditures of war, when we grew familiar with paying three millions a day! Seventy thousand dollars seemed a great sum; but Mr. Bayard in reply reminded them that England then paid nine hundred thousand dollars a year for the transportation of the mails between the United States and England; and argued that it was a very small amount for the great service rendered. He said:

"We have sent out ships to make explorations and observations
in the Red Sea and in South America; we sent one or two
expensive expeditions to Japan, and published at great cost
some elegant books narrating their exploits. The expense even
in ships alone, in that instance, was at the rate of twenty to
one here, but no cry of economy was then raised." "I look upon
this proposition solely as a business measure; in that point of
view I believe the Government will obtain more service for the
amount of money, than by any other contract that we have ever
made, or now can make, for the transmission of intelligence."

As to the expense of furnishing a ship of war to assist in laying the cable, Mr. Douglas asked:

"Will it cost anything to furnish the use of one of our
steamships? They are idle. We have no practical use for them at
present. They are in commission. They have their coal on board,
and their full armament. They will be rendering no service to
us if they are not engaged in this work. If there was nothing
more than a question of national pride involved, I would gladly
furnish the use of an American ship for that purpose. England
tenders one of her national vessels, and why should we not
tender one also? It costs England nothing, and it costs us
nothing."

Mr. Rusk made the same point, in arguing that ships might be sent to assist in laying the cable, giving this homely but sufficient reason: "I think that is better than to keep them rotting at the navy-yards, with the officers frollicking on shore."

Mr. Douglas urged still further:

"American citizens have commenced this enterprise. The honor
and the glory of the achievement, if successful, will be due
to American genius and American daring. Why should the American
Government be so penurious--I do not know that that is the
proper word, for it costs nothing--why should we be actuated by
so illiberal a spirit as to refuse the use of one of our
steamships to convey the wire when it does not cost one
farthing to the Treasury of the United States?"

But behind all these objections of expense and of want of constitutional power, was one greater than all, and that was England! The real animus of the opposition was a fear of giving some advantage to Great Britain. This has always been sufficient to excite the hostility of a certain class of politicians. No matter what the subject of the proposed cooperation, if it were purely a scientific expedition, they were sure England was going to profit by it to our injury. So now there were those who felt that in this submarine cable England was literally crawling under the sea to get some advantage of the United States!

This jealousy and hostility spoke loudest from the mouths of Southerners. It is noteworthy that men who, in less than five years after, were figuring abroad, courting foreign influence against their own country, were then fiercest in denunciation of England. Mason and Slidell voted together against the bill. Butler, of South Carolina, was very bitter in his opposition--saying, with a sneer, that "this was simply a mail service under the surveillance of Great Britain"--and so was Hunter, of Virginia; while Jones, of Tennessee, bursting with patriotism, found a sufficient reason for his opposition, in that "he did not want anything to do with England or Englishmen!"

But it should be said in justice, that to this general hostility of the South there were some exceptions. Benjamin, of Louisiana, gave the bill an earnest support; so did Mallory, of Florida, Chairman of the Naval Committee; and especially that noble Southerner, Rusk, of Texas, "with whose aid," as Mr. Seward said, "it seemed that there was no good thing which he could not do in Congress." Mr. Rusk declared that he regarded it as "the great enterprise of the age," and expressed his surprise at the very moderate subsidy asked for, only seventy thousand dollars a year, saying that, "with a reasonable prospect of success in an enterprise, calculated to produce such beneficial results, he should be willing to vote two hundred thousand dollars."

But with the majority of Southern Senators, there was a repugnance to acting in concert with England, which could not be overcome. They argued that this was not truly a line between England and the United States, but between England and her own colonies--a line of which she alone was to reap the benefit. _Both its termini were in the British possessions._ In the event of war this would give a tremendous advantage to the power holding both ends of the line. All the speakers harped on this string; and it may be worth a page or two to see how this was met and answered. When Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, asked, "What security are we to have that in time of war we shall have the use of the telegraph as well as the British Government?" Mr. Seward answered:

"It appears not to have been contemplated by the British
Government that there would ever be any interruption of the
amicable relations between the two countries. Therefore nothing
was proposed in their contract for the contingency of war.

"That the two termini are both in the British dominions is
true; but it is equally true that there is no other terminus on
this continent where it is practicable to make that
communication except in the British dominions. We have no
dominions on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. There is no
other route known on which the telegraphic wire could be drawn
through the ocean so as to find a proper resting-place or
anchorage except this. The distance on this route is seventeen
hundred miles. It is not even known that the telegraphic wire
will carry the fluid with sufficient strength to communicate
across those seventeen hundred miles. That is yet a scientific
experiment, and the Company are prepared to make it.

"In regard to war, all the danger is this: There is a hazard of
war at some future time, and whatever arrangements we might
make, war would break them up. No treaty would save us. My own
hope is, that after the telegraphic wire is once laid, there
will be no more war between the United States and Great
Britain. I believe that whenever such a connection as this
shall be made, we diminish the chances of war, and diminish
them in such a degree, that it is not necessary to take them
into consideration at the present moment.

"Let us see where we are. What shall we gain by refusing to
enter into this agreement? If we do not make it, the British
Government has only to add ten thousand pounds sterling more
annually, and they have the whole monopoly of this wire,
without any stipulation whatever--not only in war but in peace.
If we make this contract with the Company, we at least secure
the benefit of it in time of peace, and we postpone and delay
the dangers of war. If there shall ever be war, it would
abrogate all treaties that can be made in regard to this
subject, unless it be true, as the honorable Senator from
Virginia thinks, that treaties can be made which will be
regarded as obligatory by nations in time of war. If so, we
have all the advantages in time of peace, for the purpose of
making such treaties hereafter, without the least reason to
infer that there would be any reluctance on the part of the
British Government to enter into that negotiation with us, if
we should desire to do so. The British Government, if it had
such a disposition as the honorable Senator supposes, would
certainly have proposed to monopolize all this telegraphic
line, instead of proposing to divide it."[A]

Mr. Hale spoke in the same strain:

"It seems to me that the war spirit and the contingencies of
war are brought in a little too often upon matters of
legislation which have no necessary connection with them. If we
are to be governed by considerations of that sort, they would
paralyze all improvements; they would stop the great
appropriations for commerce; they would at once neutralize that
policy which sets our ocean steamers afloat. Nobody pretends
that the intercourse which is kept up between Great Britain and
this country by our ocean steamers would be continued in time
of war; nor the communication with France or other nations.

"If we are deterred for that reason, we shall be pursuing a
policy that will paralyze improvements on those parts of the
coast which lie contiguous to the lakes. The city of Detroit
will have to be abandoned, beautiful and progressive as it is,
because in time of war the mansions of her citizens there lie
within the range of British guns.

"What will the suspension bridge at Niagara be good for in a
time of war? If the British cut off their end of it, our end
will not be worth much. I believe that among the things which
will bind us together in peace, this telegraphic wire will be
one of the most potent. It will bind the two countries together
literally with cords of iron that will hold us in the bonds of
peace. I repudiate entirely the policy which refuses to adopt
it, because in time of war it may be interrupted. Such a policy
as that would drive us back to a state of barbarism. It would
destroy the spirit of progress; it would retard improvement; it
would paralyze all the advances which are making us a more
civilized, and a more informed and a better people than the one
which preceded us."

Mr. Douglas cut the matter short by saying:

"I am willing to vote for this bill as a peace measure, as a
commercial measure--but not as a war measure; and when war
comes, let us rely on our power and ability to take this end of
the wire, and keep it."

Mr. Benjamin said:

"The sum of money that this Government proposes to give for the
use of this telegraph will amount, in the twenty-five years, to
something between L300,000 and L400,000. Now, if this be a
matter of such immense importance to Great Britain--if this be
the golden opportunity--and if, indeed, her control of this
line be such a powerful engine, whether in war or in peace, is
it not most extraordinary that she proposes to us a full share
in its benefits and in its control, and allows to our
Government equal rights with herself in the transmission of
communications for the sum of about L300,000, to be paid in
annual instalments through twenty-five years? If this be,
indeed, a very important instrumentality in behalf of Great
Britain for the conduct of her commerce, the government of her
possessions, or the efficient action of her troops in time of
war, the L300,000 expended upon it are but as a drop in the
bucket when compared with the immense resources of that empire.
I think, therefore, we may as well discard from our
consideration of this subject all these visions about the
immense importance of the governmental aid in this matter, to
be rendered under the provisions of this bill.

"Mr. President, let us not always be thinking of war; let us be
using means to preserve peace. The amount that would be
expended by this Government in six months' war with Great
Britain, would far exceed every thing that we shall have to pay
for the use of this telegraphic line for the entire twenty-five
years of the contract; and do you not believe that this
instrumentality will be sufficiently efficient to bind together
the peace, the commerce, and the interests of the two
countries, so as even to defer a war for six months or twelve
months, if one should ever become inevitable, beyond the period
at which it would otherwise occur? If it does that, it will in
six or eight or nine months repay the expenditures of
twenty-five years.

"Again, Sir, I say, if Great Britain wants it for war, she will
put it there at her own expense. It is not three hundred
thousand pounds, or four hundred thousand pounds, that will
arrest her. If, on the contrary, this be useful to
commerce--useful in an eminent degree--useful for the
preservation of peace, then I confess I feel some pride that my
country should aid in establishing it. I confess I feel a glow
of something like pride that I belong to the great human family
when I see these triumphs of science, by which mind is brought
into instant communication with mind across the intervening
oceans, which, to our unenlightened forefathers, seemed placed
there by Providence as an eternal barrier to communication
between man and man. Now, Sir, we speak from minute to minute.
Scarcely can a gun be fired in war on the European shore ere
its echoes will reverberate among our own mountains, and be
heard by every citizen in the land. All this is a triumph of
science--of American genius, and I for one feel proud of it,
and feel desirous of sustaining and promoting it."

Mr. Douglas said:

"Our policy is essentially a policy of peace. We want peace
with the whole world, above all other considerations. There
never has been a time in the history of this Republic, when
peace was more essential to our prosperity, to our advancement,
and to our progress, than it is now. We have made great
progress in time of peace--an almost inconceivable progress
since the last war with Great Britain. Twenty-five years more
of peace will put us far in advance of any other nation on
earth."

It was fit that Mr. Seward, who introduced the bill, and opened the debate, should close in words that now seem prophetic, and show the large wisdom, looking before and after, of this eminent statesman:

"There was an American citizen who, in the year 1770, or
thereabout, indicated to this country, to Great Britain, and to
the world, the use of the lightning for the purposes of
communication of intelligence, and that was Dr. Franklin. I am
sure that there is not only no member of the Senate, but no
American citizen, however humble, who would be willing to have
struck out from the achievements of American invention this
great discovery of the lightning as an agent for the uses of
human society.

"The suggestion made by that distinguished and illustrious
American was followed up some fifty years afterward by another
suggestion and another indication from another American, and
that was Mr. Samuel F. B. Morse, who indicated to the American
Government the means by which the lightning could be made to
write, and by which the telegraphic wires could be made to
supply the place of wind and steam for carrying intelligence.

"We have followed out the suggestions of these eminent
Americans hitherto, and I am sure at a very small cost. The
Government of the United States appropriated $40,000 to test
the practicability of Morse's suggestion; the $40,000 thus
expended established its practicability and its use. Now, there
is no person on the face of the globe who can measure the price
at which, if a reasonable man, he would be willing to strike
from the world the use of the magnetic telegraph as a means of
communication between different portions of the same country.
This great invention is now to be brought into its further,
wider, and broader use--the use by the general society of
nations, international use, the use of the society of mankind.
Its benefits are large--just in proportion to the extent and
scope of its operation. They are not merely benefits to the
Government, but they are benefits to the citizens and subjects
of all nations and of all States.

"I might enlarge further on this subject, but I forbear to do
so, because I know that at some future time I shall come across
the record of what I have said to-day. I know that then what I
have said to-day, by way of anticipation, will fall so far
short of the reality of benefits which individuals, States, and
nations will have derived from this great enterprise, that I
shall not reflect upon it without disappointment and
mortification."

After such arguments, it should seem that there could be but one opinion, and yet the bill passed the Senate by only _one_ majority! It also had to run the gauntlet of the House of Representatives, where it encountered the same hostility. But at length it got through, and was signed by President Pierce on the third of March, the day before he went out of office. Thus it became a law.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] It is worthy of notice, that when the Bill granting a charter to the Atlantic Telegraph Company was offered in the British Parliament, at least one nobleman found fault with it on this very ground, that it gave away important advantages which properly belonged to England, and which she ought to reserve to herself:

"In the House of Lords, on the twentieth of July, 1857, on the motion for the third reading of the Telegraph Company's bill,

"Lord Redesdale called attention to the fact that, although the termini of the proposed telegraph were both in her Majesty's dominions, namely, in Ireland and Newfoundland, the American Government were to enjoy the same priority as the British Government with regard to the transmission of messages. It was said that this equal right was owing to the fact that a joint guarantee had been given by the two Governments. _He thought, however, it would have been far better policy on the part of her Majesty's Government if they had either undertaken the whole guarantee themselves, and thus had obtained free and sole control over the connecting line of telegraph, or had invited our own colonies to participate in that guarantee, rather than have allowed a foreign government to join in making it._ At the same time, if the clause in question had the sanction of her Majesty's ministry, it was not his intention to object to it.

"Earl Granville said this telegraph was intended to connect two great countries, and, as the two Governments had gone hand in hand with regard to the guarantee, it seemed only reasonable that both should have the same rights as to transmitting messages.

"The bill was then read a third time and passed."