The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph / With the Reports of Congress, and a Description of All Telegraphs Known, Employing Electricity or Galvanism

by Alfred Vail

Magnetic Telegraph from Baltimore to New York, March 3, 1845.

Mr. Chappell, from the Committee of Ways and Means, made the following Report.

The Committee of Ways and Means, to whom was referred a resolution instructing said committee to inquire into the expediency of reporting a bill to continue the Electro Magnetic Telegraph from Baltimore to New York, by way of Philadelphia, beg leave to submit the following report:

The authority given by the constitution to Congress to establish post offices and post roads, so far as it operates to confer on the government any power which would not equally belong to it without that provision, amounts simply to making the government, a public or a common carrier of the written correspondence of individuals, and of the lighter form of printed intelligence and news. In other words, by virtue of this clause, the government is authorized and required to pursue, on a scale commensurate with the wants and extent of the country, the business of receiving, transporting, and delivering letters, newspapers, and pamphlets, for all persons, private, as well as public, and to and from any and all places in the Union. And for the service thus rendered, the government exacts from the individuals served, a specific fee or compensation, under the name of postage, for every letter or paper transported and delivered. Now, it is quite obvious that both the pursuit of this business, and the exaction of a remuneration for it, would be altogether beyond the range of federal authority, but for the specially granted power to establish post offices and post roads. Mere silence in the constitution on this subject would have effectually withheld the power from the general government, and would have caused the business of carrying letters, newspapers, &c., to remain where all other branches of the carrying trade are actually left—namely, in the hands of individual enterprise, subject to State legislation, and to such (and no other) federal control as is involved in the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the States.

The functions thus devolved on the government, of performing for the people the office of universal letter carrier and news carrier, is a matter of the very highest consequence in every light in which it can be viewed. The bare fact that our ancestors refused to leave it dependent on individual enterprise or State control, and vested it expressly in Congress, abundantly attested their anxious sense of its importance, and their conviction of the impracticability of realizing the requisite public advantages from it, otherwise than by giving it a federal lodgment and administration.

Had not these advantages been regarded as attainable in no other way, while, at the same time, they were felt to be virtually necessary, the framers and adopters of the constitution, devoted as they are known to have been to the power and importance of the States, and jealously apprehensive of the undue preponderance of the federal branch, would never have consented to engraft on that branch a power so great, so growing, so penetrating and pervading, as that of the post office system—a power involving the direct exercise of the carrying trade by the government on a vast scale, and requiring, in order to its exercise, the organization and maintenance of a huge and distinct administrative department, which, in its operations, touches daily and intimately the private affairs as well as public interests of the people; receives and expends millions of money every year; and continually employs, pays, and controls many thousands of persons, scattered through all parts of the country—thus adding mightily to federal power, and especially to the influence and patronage of the federal executive. These are all consequences which result directly and necessarily from the bestowment of the post office power on the general government. And inasmuch as the government thus derives from that power so great an addition to its own weight and influence, it certainly ought to be considered as contracting therefrom a correspondently heavy obligation to make the power advantageous and useful to the people, to the utmost extent of which it is capable.

The government has ever shown itself fully sensible of this obligation, and alive to its fulfilment. Hence, that immense and minute machinery of post offices and post roads, of postmasters, contractors, and carriers, which overspreads the country, and meets us everywhere—all designed and kept up for the sole purpose of bringing the contents of the mail-bag, with frequency, regularity, and celerity, near to the doors of our whole population. For many years, no better or more expeditious means of conveyance could be found than horse-power in the various forms in which it might be applied on ordinary highways. But in those times, as well as now, the government acted on the principle of not regarding even a heavy increase of expense as an objection sufficient to outweigh so important an object as the regular, frequent, and rapid transmission of the mail between all the great points, and along all the chief arteries of the country. On such routes, accordingly, the mail was kept running without interruption—by night as well as by day—and at the best speed that could be secured by a well organized and costly system of relays of men, horses, and vehicles.

But, at length, the ever advancing discoveries and improvements of science and art threw into the shade, as slow and inadequate, all the old and long used modes of travel and transportation. Steamboats and railroads burst upon the world, introducing a new and wonderful era in its commerce and intercourse; private capital and enterprise soon built them up, and put them in operation, whenever a sufficiently tempting prospect of gain appeared; and all private persons, as well as public departments, saw presented to their option more perfect and expeditious modes of transportation than could have possibly entered into the anticipations of the framers of the constitution. But, though not anticipated or foreseen, these new and improved modes were as clearly within the purview of the constitution, as were the older and less perfect ones with which our ancestors were familiar. And there being no doubt entertained either on this point, or as to the obligation of the government to lay hold of the best and most rapid methods of transmission which the improvements of the age put in its reach, steam-power commended itself at once to adoption, and has long been extensively employed, both on land and water, for the carriage of the mail.

It is not without full reflection that the committee insist on the principle that it was the duty as well as the right of the government thus to avail itself, even at heavy additional expense, of the powerful agency of steam, for the purpose of accelerating the mails. It would have been a gross and manifest dereliction to have permitted that vitally important concern, the transportation of the mail—a concern so anxiously intrusted by the constitution to the federal authority—it would have been, in the opinion of the committee, a gross and manifest dereliction to have permitted it to lag behind the improvements of the age, and to be outstripped by the pace of ordinary travel and commercial communication. Such is the view which the Post Office Department avowedly takes of its own obligations, and upon which it habitually acts. To be outstripped by private expresses, or by the ordinary lines of travel, is deemed discreditable to the department, injurious to the general interests of the country, and a thing, therefore, not to be permitted.

This great and fundamental principle upon which the departments acts, (of not being outstripped in the transmission of correspondence and intelligence,) led necessarily to subsidizing the steam-engine into the service of the post office; and it must and will lead, with equal certainty, to a like adoption of any other newly discovered agency or contrivance possessing decided advantage of celerity over previously used methods. It is not probable, however, that the government will ever find itself called upon to make any transition wider or more striking than that already so familiar to us—a transition from the use of animal power to the tremendous enginery of the steam-engine; from common roads to iron railways; from land carriage to the conversion of rivers, lakes, and the ocean itself, into post roads.