Thomas B. Reed

[Speech of David Dudley Field at the dinner given in honor of Samuel F. B. Morse, New York City, December 27, 1863.]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—In the early days of the electric telegraph, a proposition was made that it should be called the Morseograph. I cannot but think that that would have been a distinctive and appropriate designation; thus, in all future time, when the thing should be mentioned, recalling the history of its origin. But the name of the inventor is no secret; and the world will ratify the judgment we pronounce to-night that, as benefactor and discoverer, his name will be immortal.

If we were to measure the future of the telegraph by what it has already accomplished, we should predict for it an indefinite extension. Less than twenty years ago, the first line was built in the United States. Though it extended only from Washington to Baltimore, it was begun in doubt and completed with difficulty. Thence it stretched itself out first to Philadelphia and New York, then to other principal cities, and afterward along the great thoroughfares. On the other side of the sea it advanced from city to city, and from one market to another.

At first laid with hesitation underneath the rivers, it was next carried beneath narrow seas, and at last plunged into the ocean and passed from continent to continent. Compare its feeble beginning with its achievement of to-day. Think of the uncertainty with which, after weary months upon dusty Maryland roads, the last link of that first line was closed, and then think of the exultation with which great ships in mid-ocean brought up from the bottom of the sea a cable lost two miles down, and the problem was forever solved, not only that an ocean-telegraph cable was possible, but that it could not be so lost as that it might not be found.

Standing in the presence of the great inventor, I am constrained to congratulate him upon the fulness of his triumph as he remembers the early effort, and contrasts it with the marvels of this night in this hall. That little instrument, no larger than the clock upon the chamber mantel, and making as little noise, is yet speaking to both America and Europe; and what it says will be printed before the dawn, and laid at morning under the eyes of millions of readers. Did I say before the dawn? It will meet the dawn in its circuit before it reaches the confines of eastern Europe. In the opposite quarter, we know that the message which has just left us for the West will outstrip the day. Even while I have been speaking, the message has crossed the Mississippi, passed the workmen laying the farthest rail of the Pacific road, bounded over the Sierra Nevada, and dashed into the plains of California, as the last ray of to-day's sun is fading from the shore, and the twilight is falling upon the Pacific Sea.

It is, however, not alone its history which justifies us in predicting for the telegraph indefinite extension. Its essential character must sooner or later carry it to every part of the habitable globe. Of all the agencies yet vouchsafed to man, it is the most accessible and the most potent. While the machinery itself is simple and cheap, the element from which it is fed is abundant and all-pervading. It is in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, and in the water under the earth. You take a little cup and pass into it a slender wire, when lo! there comes to it a spark from air and water, from the cloud and the solid earth, which the highest mountains cannot stop, nor the deepest seas drown, as it dashes on its fiery way, indifferent whether its errand be to the next village or to the antipodes. No other voice can speak to the far and near at the same time. No other hand can write a message which may be delivered within the same hour at Quebec and at Moscow. By no other means may you converse at once with the farmer of Illinois and the merchant of Amsterdam, with the German on the Danube and the Arab under his palm.

To the use of such an instrument there can be no limit but the desire of man to converse with man. If from this populous and opulent capital you would speak with any inhabitant of either hemisphere, you have here an agent which may be brought to do your bidding. If any, however distant, desire to speak with us, they have these means at their command. How great will be the effect of all this upon the civilization of the human race, I do not pretend to foresee. But this I foresee, as all men may, that the necessities of governments, the thirst for knowledge, and the restless activity of commerce will make the telegraph girdle the earth and bind it in a network of electric wire.

The Atlantic, the most dangerous and difficult of all the seas, has been crossed. In the Pacific you may pass easily from island to island, till you reach the shores of Eastern Asia. There an American company will take it up and extend it from side to side of the central Flowery Land. And an English company is about to cross the straits which divide Australia from the elder continent. Indeed, I think that I declare not only what is possible but what will come to pass within the next decade, that there will be a telegraph-office wherever there is now a post-office, and that messages by the telegraph will pass almost as frequently as messages by the mail.

Then the different races and nations of men will stand, as it were in the presence of one another. They will know one another better. They will act and react upon one another. They may be moved by common sympathies and swayed by common interests. Thus the electric spark is the true Promethean fire, which is to kindle human hearts. Then will men learn that they are brethren, and that it is not less their interest than their duty to cultivate good-will and peace throughout all the earth.

EARLY CONNECTICUT

Mr. President:—When you did me the honor to invite me to this banquet, I was quick to accept the invitation, because I expected to meet the judges of my native State, of which I bear so pleasant a remembrance. I find, however, representatives from other seats of justice come to greet the judges of Connecticut. You have here a judge from the Dominion of Canada, over which shines the mild light of Arcturus, and on the other side a representative from Texas where glows, not the Lone Star of other days, but the bright constellation of the Southern Cross. You have judges from the neighboring State of New Jersey, from the further State of Pennsylvania, and from Delaware, about which I may use the language of John Quincy Adams, speaking of Rhode Island: "She is to be measured, not by the smallness of her stature, but by the loftiness of her principles." All these eminent judges are here to join in the salutation to the judges of Connecticut, and to them therefore our attention is to be chiefly directed.

I am old enough to remember the judges of Connecticut when they sat under the authority of the Colonial charter, that charter which was hidden in the famous oak of Hartford to escape seizure by an emissary of the King of England. I was present at the trial in Haddam, my native town, of a man for murder. Trumbull was the judge, that Trumbull who wrote "McFingal," and who, being elected for a single year, as was then the rule, was re-elected as long as he lived. He was neatly dressed, wearing ruffles in the bosom, and at the wrists, and was in trim knee-breeches.

I remember this incident of the trial. The crowd was so great that the court was adjourned from the court house to the church, then called the meeting-house. The jurors sat in the square pews. One of the jurors, a respectable farmer of the neighborhood, thinking that he had detected some mistake of the counsel rose to correct him, when the counsel retorted that the juror was the one mistaken, and added: "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." The prisoner was convicted and was hanged at Middletown. I went up to see the execution, and when I reached the place trained bands were marching through the streets, playing their music as if for a great festivity. A sermon was preached to a crowded house, and the prisoner was then taken, dressed in a shroud, to a hill near by, and in the presence of thousands of spectators was executed. These scenes were of course impressed strongly on the memory of a boy. I remember the session of the county court at Haddam, when the judges, headed by the sheriff, marched in order from the tavern to the court house. I remember seeing in court David Daggett, wearing white top boots, and I met Roger Minot Sherman, driving into the village in a sulky. I remember Staples and Hungerford. The latter went into court one day with a Bible under his arm, to show from the first chapter of Genesis, as authority in an insurance case, that the day began at sunset, "and the evening and the morning were the first day."

In those days party feeling ran high in Connecticut, between the Democrats and the Federalists—"Demos" and "Feds," as they were called for shortness—and contempt as well. Let me recount two anecdotes: The Rev. Dr. Backus, riding along the highway, stopped at a brook to water his horse, when another rider came up from the opposite side, and thus addressed the good man: "Good-morning, Mr. Minister." The latter replied, "Good-morning, Mr. Democrat. How did you know that I was a minister?" "By your dress. How did you know that I was a Democrat?" "By your address."

At another time Dr. Backus, being prosecuted for a libel upon Mr. Jefferson, was taken from his home to Hartford to be bailed. The minister and the marshal rode of course, for that was not the heyday of vehicles. The minister rode very fast, so fast that the marshal called out after him: "Dr. Backus, Dr. Backus, you ride as if the devil were after you." The Doctor turning his head replied, "Just so!"

Mr. President, Connecticut has been often abused for the frugality and thrift of its people, and called in derision the Nutmeg State. I remember hearing that a New Yorker once put into his will an injunction against any child of his being educated in Connecticut.

An Episcopal clergyman removing from New York into a Connecticut town was actually boycotted. The people would not sell him anything to eat, and I believe he returned for food and shelter to the hither side of Byram River. I remember such a joke as this current in New York; that they had a singular habit in Connecticut, when a man cast up his accounts with his neighbor and gave him a note for the balance, he used to exclaim: "Thank God, that debt is paid." Some of the people have singular tastes now and then; as for example there is a hill behind East Haddam that used to be called "Stagger-all-hill," but inquiring the other day, I was told its name was now "Mount Parnassus."

They may say all these things if they please, but Connecticut has no public debt, or a very small one at most, and her people are industrious, educated, polite to strangers, jealous of their rights and brave enough to defend them. I remember hearing Mrs. Fanny Kemble say, some years ago, of the twelve hundred thousand people then inhabiting Massachusetts, that, taking them all in all, she thought they were the foremost twelve hundred thousand people living together in the world, and I can speak in similar terms of the inhabitants of Connecticut, as really a part of the same people.

In conclusion, Mr. President, may I without affectation utter these words of love for my native State, its scenery and its people. Flow on, gentle river, shine on, rugged and wooded hills, smile on, green meadows basking in the sun, and you, brave people, who dwell amid these scenes, prove yourselves ever worthy of your progenitors, and flaunt high as you will, the old banner with its hopeful and trustful motto—qui transtulit sustinet.