The bill was then laid aside to be reported.
On February 23, the once more hopeful inventor sent off the following hurriedly written letter to his brother:—
"You will perceive by the proceedings of the House to-day that my bill has passed the House by a vote of 89 to 80. A close vote after the expectations raised by some of my friends in the early part of the session, but enough is as good as a feast, and it is safe so far as the House is concerned. I will advise you of the progress of it through the Senate. All my anxieties are now centred there. I write in great haste."
A revised record of the voting showed that the margin of victory was even slighter, for in a letter to Smith, Morse says:—
"The long agony (truly agony to me) is over, for you will perceive by the papers of to-morrow that, so far as the House is concerned, the matter is decided. My bill has passed by a vote of eighty-nine to eighty-three. A close vote, you will say, but explained upon several grounds not affecting the disposition of many individual members, who voted against it, to the invention. In this matter six votes are as good as a thousand, so far as the appropriation is concerned.
"The yeas and nays will tell you who were friendly and who adverse to the bill. I shall now bend all my attention to the Senate. There is a good disposition there and I am now strongly encouraged to think that my invention will be placed before the country in such a position as to be properly appreciated, and to yield to all its proprietors a proper compensation.
"I have no desire to vaunt my exertions, but I can truly say that I have never passed so trying a period as the last two months. Professor Fisher (who has been of the greatest service to me) and I have been busy from morning till night every day since we have been here. I have brought him on with me at my expense, and he will be one of the first assistants in the first experimental line, if the bill passes…. My feelings at the prospect of success are of a joyous character, as you may well believe, and one of the principal elements of my joy is that I shall be enabled to contribute to the happiness of all who formerly assisted me, some of whom are, at present, specially depressed."
Writing to Alfred Vail on the same day, he says after telling of the passage of the bill:—
"You can have but a faint idea of the sacrifices and trials I have had in getting the Telegraph thus far before the country and the world. I cannot detail them here; I can only say that, for two years, I have labored all my time and at my own expense, without assistance from the other proprietors (except in obtaining the iron of the magnets for the last instruments obtained of you) to forward our enterprise. My means to defray my expenses, to meet which every cent I owned in the world was collected, are nearly all gone, and if, by any means, the bill should fail in the Senate, I shall return to New York with the fraction of a dollar in my pocket."
And now the final struggle which meant success or failure was on. Only eight days of the session remained and the calendar was, as usual, crowded. The inventor, his nerves stretched to the breaking point, hoped and yet feared. He had every reason to believe that the Senate would show more broad-minded enlightenment than the House, and yet he had been told that his bill would pass the House by acclamation, while the event proved that it had barely squeezed through by a beggarly majority of six. He heard disquieting rumors of a determination on the part of some of the House members to procure the defeat of the bill in the Senate. Would they succeed, would the victory, almost won, be snatched from him at the last moment, or would his faith in an overruling Providence, and in his own mission as an instrument of that Providence, be justified at last?