By the untiring efforts of Mr. Kennedy and other Representatives, the bill was finally brought before the House for consideration near the close of the session. In the light of events, the discussion that immediately preceded the vote is of interest, and in no small degree amusing, to this generation. On February twenty-first, 1843, Mr. Johnson of Tennessee wished to say a word upon the bill. As the present Congress had done much to encourage science, he did not wish to see the science of Mesmerism neglected and overlooked. He therefore proposed that one-half of the appropriation be given to Mr. Fisk to enable him to carry on experiments as well as Professor Morse. Mr. Houston thought that Millerism should also be included in the benefits of the appropriation. Mr. Stanley said he should have no objection to the appropriation for Mesmeric experiments provided the gentleman from Tennessee was the subject. Mr. Johnson said he should have no objection provided Mr. Stanley was the operator. Several gentlemen now called for the reading of the amendment, and it was read by the clerk as follows: "Provided that one-half of the said sum shall be appropriated for trying Mesmeric experiments under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury."
Mr. Mason arose to a question of order. He maintained that the amendment was not bona fide, and that such amendments were calculated to injure the character of the House. He appealed to the Chair, the House being then in committee of the whole, to rule the amendment out of order.
The Chairman said that it was not for him to judge of the motives of members who offered amendments, and that he could not therefore undertake to pronounce the amendment not bona fide. Objection might be raised to it on the ground that it was not sufficiently analogous in character to the bill under consideration; but, in the opinion of the Chair, it would require a scientific analysis to determine how far the magnetism of mesmerism was analogous to that employed in telegraphs. He therefore ruled the amendment in order.
The amendment was rejected. The bill was subsequently reported favorably to the House, and two days later passed by the close vote of eighty-nine to eighty-three.
The bill then went to the Senate, and was placed upon the calendar. A large number of bills were ahead of it, and Mr. Morse was assured by a kindly Senator that there was no possible chance for its consideration. All hope seemed to forsake the great inventor, as, from his seat in the gallery, he was a gloomy witness of the waning hours of the session. Unable longer to endure the strain, he sought his humble dwelling an hour before final adjournment. On arising the next morning, a little girl, the daughter of a faithful friend, ran up to him with a message from her father, to the effect that in the hurry and confusion of the midnight hour, and just before the close of the session, the Senate had passed his bill, which immediately received the signature of the President.
With the sum thus appropriated at his command, Morse now earnestly resumed the experiments, which a few months later resulted so successfully. Referring to the homeward voyage from Europe, in 1832, his biographer says:
"One day Dr. Charles S. Jackson of Boston, a fellow passenger, described an experiment recently made in Paris by means of which electricity had been instantaneously transmitted through a great length of wire; to which Morse replied, 'If that be so, I see no reason why messages may not instantaneously be transmitted by electricity.'"
The key-note was struck, and before his ship reached New York the invention of the telegraph was virtually made, and even the essential features of the electro-magnetic transmitting and recording apparatus were sketched on paper. Of necessity, in reaching this result, Morse made use of the ideas and discoveries of many other minds. As stated by his biographer:
"Various forms of telegraphic intercourse had been devised before; electro-magnetism had been studied by savants for many years; Franklin even had experimented with the transmission of electricity through great lengths of wire. It was reserved for Morse to combine the results of many fragmentary and unsuccessful attempts, and put them, after many years of trial, to a practical use; and though his claims to the invention have been many times attacked in the press and in the courts, they have been triumphantly vindicated alike by the law and the verdict of the people, both at home and abroad. The Chief Justice of the United States in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in one of the Morse cases, said: 'It can make no difference whether the inventor derived his information from books or from conversation with men skilled in the science; and the fact that Morse sought and obtained the necessary information and counsel from the best sources and acted upon it, neither impairs his right as an inventor, nor detracts from his merits.'"
It will be remembered that soon after his first successful experiment, Morse was harassed by protracted litigation, and that many attempts were made to deprive him of the just rewards of his great invention. True, he had been preceded along the same lines by great discoveries. This fact no man recognized more unreservedly than himself. He was the inventor, his work, that of gathering up and applying the marvellous discoveries of others to the practical purposes of human life. As stated by Mr. Garfield: