With great respect we remain,
Very truly your friends.
Here follow the names of practically every man of prominence in New York at that time.
Morse replied on December 4:—
To the Hon. Hamilton Fish, Hon. John T. Hoffman, Hon. Wm. Dennison, Hon.
A.G. Curtin, Hon. Wm. E. Dodge, Peter Cooper, Esq., Daniel Huntington,
Esq., Wm. Orton, Esq., A.A. Low, Esq., James Brown, Esq., Cyrus W. Field,
Esq., John J. Cisco, Esq., and others.
Gentlemen,—I have received your flattering request of the 30th November, proposing the compliment of a public banquet to me, and asking me to appoint a day on which it would be convenient for me to meet you.
Did your proposal intend simply a personal compliment I should feel no hesitation in thanking you cordially for this evidence of your personal regard, while I declined your proffered honor; but I cannot fail to perceive that there is a paramount patriotic duty connected with your proposal which forbids me to decline your invitation.
In accepting it, therefore, I would name (in view of some personal arrangements) Wednesday the 30th inst. as the day which would be most agreeable to me.
Accept, Gentlemen, the assurance of the respect of Your obedient servant,
Samuel F.B. Morse.
The banquet was given at Delmonico's, which was then on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, and was presided over by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who had been the leading counsel against Morse in his first great lawsuit, but who now cheerfully acknowledged that to Morse and America the great invention of the telegraph was due. About two hundred men sat down at the tables, among them some of the most eminent in the country. Morse sat at the right of Chief Justice Chase, and Sir Edward Thornton, British Ambassador, on his left. When the time for speechmaking came, Cyrus Field read letters from President Andrew Johnson; from General Grant, President-elect; from Speaker Colfax, Admiral Farragut, and many others. He also read a telegram from Governor Alexander H. Bullock of Massachusetts: "Massachusetts honors her two sons—Franklin and Morse. The one conducted the lightning safely from the sky; the other conducts it beneath the ocean from continent to continent. The one tamed the lightning; the other makes it minister to human wants and human progress."
From London came another message:—