In October, 1841, the Sun spent money freely to secure a quick report of the momentous trial of Alexander McLeod for the murder of Amos Durfee. War between the United States and Great Britain hinged on the outcome. During the rebellion in Upper Canada, in 1837, the American steamer Caroline was used by the insurgents to carry supplies down the Niagara River to a party of rebels on Navy Island. A party of loyal Canadians seized and destroyed the Caroline at Grand Island, and in the fight Durfee and eleven others were killed. The Canadian, McLeod, who boasted of being a participant, was arrested when he ventured across the American border in 1840.
The British government made a demand for his release, insisting that what McLeod had done was an act of war, performed under the orders of his commanding officer, Captain Drew. President Van Buren replied that the American government had several times asked the British government whether the destruction of the Caroline was an act of war, and had never received a reply; and further, that the Federal government had no power to prevent the State of New York from trying persons indicted within its jurisdiction.
The whole country realized the hostile attitude of the British ministry, and accepted its threat that war would be declared if McLeod were not released. The trial took place at Utica, New York, and the Sun printed from two to five columns a day about it. It ran a special train from Utica to Schenectady. There a famous driver, Otis Dimmick, waited with a fine team of horses to take the story to the Albany boat, the fastest means of transportation between the State capital and the metropolis. The Sun declared that one day Dimmick and his horses made the sixteen miles between Schenectady and Albany in forty-nine minutes.
And the end of it all was proof that McLeod, who had boasted of killing “a damned Yankee,” had been asleep in Chippewa on the night of the Caroline affair, and was nothing worse than a braggart. So the war-cloud blew over.
Beach was a man of great faith in railroads and all other forms of progress. When the Boston and Albany road was finished, the Sun related how a barrel of flour was growing in the field in Canandaigua on a Monday—the barrel in a tree and the flour in the wheat—and on Wednesday, transformed and ready for the baker, it was in Boston.
Sperm candles manufactured by Mr. Penniman at Albany on Wednesday morning were burning at Faneuil Hall and at the Tremont, in Boston, on the evening of the same day.
The Sun had faith in Morse and his telegraph from the outset. The invention was born in Nassau Street, only a block or two from the Sun’s office. Morse put the wire into practical use between Baltimore and Washington on May 24, 1844. That was a Friday. The Sun said nothing about it the next day, and had no Sunday paper; but on Monday it said editorially:
MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH—The new invention is completed from Baltimore to Washington. The wire, perfectly secured against the weather by a covering of rope-yarn and tar, is conducted on the top of posts about twenty feet high and one hundred yards apart. The nominations of the convention this day are to be conveyed to Washington by this telegraph, where they will arrive in a few seconds. On Saturday morning the batteries were charged and the regular transmission of intelligence between Washington and Baltimore commenced.... At half past 11 A.M., the question being asked, what was the news at Washington, the answer was almost instantaneously returned: “Van Buren stock is rising.” This is indeed the annihilation of space.
It is hardly necessary to say that the convention referred to was the Democratic national convention at Baltimore, that Van Buren’s stock, high early in the proceedings, fell again, and that James K. Polk was the nominee.
But as New York was not fortunate enough to have the first commercial telegraph-line, the Sun had to rely on its own efforts for speedy news from the convention. It ran special trains from Baltimore, “beating the United States mail train and locomotive an hour or two.”