“ ...We are gathered to express our joy at the apparent consummation of one of those enterprises which are peculiar, I had almost said to our generation—certainly to the century in which we live. Do you reflect that there are men among you to-night, men here, who lived and were not very young before there was a steamboat on our waters? Ever since I can remember steamboats have always been at hand. There are men here who lived before they beat the waters with their wheels. And since my day railroads have been invented. I remember the first one on this land very distinctly. It was after I had graduated from college, and I am not a patriarch yet. It is within our remembrance that the telegraph itself was invented, and by a mere citizen of ours in this vicinity. All these pre-eminent methods of civilization and commerce and economy have been within the remembrance of young men—all but one within the remembrance of quite young men. Now this is not so much an invention as an enlarged application....
“I thought all the way in riding down here to-night how strange it will seem to have that silent cord lying in the sea, perfectly noiseless, perfectly undisturbed by war or by storm, by the paddles of steamers, by the thunders of navies above it, far down beyond all anchors’ reach, beyond all plumbing interference. There will be earthquakes that will shake the other world, and the tidings of them will come under the silent sea, and we shall know them upon the hither side, but the cord will be undisturbed, though it bears earthquakes to us. Markets will go up and fortunes will be made down in the depths of the sea. The silent highway will carry it without noise to us. Fortunes will go down and bankruptcies spread dismay, and the silent road will bear this message without a jar and without disturbance. Without voice or speech it will communicate thunders and earthquakes and tidings of war and revolutions, and all those things that fill the air with clamor. They will come quick as thought from the scene of their first fever and excitement, flash quick as thought and silent on their passage, and then break out on this side with fresh tremor and anxiety. To me the functions of that wire seem, in some sense, sublime. Itself impassive, quiet, still, moving either hemisphere at its extremities by the tidings that are to issue out from it....
“We are called, and shall be increasingly so, to mark the advantages which are to be derived from the connection of these continents by this telegraphic wire. To my mind the prominent advantage is this: it is bringing mankind close together, it is bringing nations nearer together. And I augur the best results to humanity from this. The more intercourse nations have with each other, other things being equal, the greater the tendency to establish between them peace and good-will, and just as they are brought together will they contribute to advance the day of universal brotherhood.
“ ...That which is spoken at 12 o’clock in London will be known by us at 8 o’clock in the morning here, according to our time.... It is no longer in her own bosom that France can keep her secrets. It is no longer in her own race that Russia can keep her thoughts and her plans. It is no longer in the glorious old British Islands that their commercial intelligence can be confined. It is wafted round and round the globe. In less than an hour, whenever this system shall be completed, the world will be enlightened quicker than by the sun; quicker than by the meteor’s flash. What is known in one place will be known in all places; the globe will have but one ear, and that ear will be everywhere....
“I scarcely dare any longer think what shall be. I remember the derision with which Whitney’s plan for a railroad to the Mississippi was hailed. I remember there was scarce a paper in the country that did not feel called upon to talk of the advisability of sending him to the lunatic asylum. I remember the time when the project of a steamer crossing the Atlantic was scientifically declared to be impracticable.... I remember when the first steamer crossed the Atlantic, and I have been told, though the story may be too good to be true, that the first steamer that made the passage to New York carried with her the newspaper containing the news of the impossibility of making the voyage, by Dr. Lardner....
“While thus we are enlarging the facilities of action, let us see to it that we maintain, at home, domestic virtue, individual intelligence—that we spread our common schools, that we multiply our newspapers throughout the land, that we make books more plenty than the leaves of the forest trees. Let every man among us be a reader and thinker and owner, and so he will be an actor. And when all men through the globe are readers, when all men through the globe are thinkers, when all men through the globe are actors—are actors because they think right—when they speak nation to nation, when from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same there is not alone a free intercourse of thought but one current of heart, virtue, religion, love—then the earth will have blossomed and consummated its history.”
Archbishop Hughes sent this note:
“Long Branch, August 26, 1858.
“My dear Mr. Field,—Under the blessing of Almighty God you have accomplished the work. But your merit, if not your human glory, would have been the same in my estimation if you had returned to us what they would call a disappointed man in whose scales of judgment enthusiasm had preponderated over ‘common-sense.’