“Vast improvements in everything relating to the structure of telegraph cables are constantly being made, and inquiry upon the subject is very active. We are becoming much more hopeful of a good time for the Atlantic company.
“Two very favorable events for telegraphy have taken place this week. First, Glass, Elliott & Co. have laid without any check or hitch, in a very perfect condition, a cable for the French government between Toulon and the island of Corsica; and, second, the same firm have completed in precisely the same state of efficiency two-thirds of a line between Malta and Alexandria for the use of the English government; as the remainder is all shallow water, the event is certain.”
After the civil war began he was often in Washington, and he was untiring in his devotion to his country, and we find him in correspondence with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and with others in official positions.
June 11, 1861, he wrote to Colonel Thomas A. Scott, then Assistant Secretary of War, at Willard’s Hotel, Washington, D. C.:
“Pardon me for repeating in this letter some of the suggestions which I made to the President, yourself, and other members of the Cabinet during my late visit to Washington;
“1. The government to immediately seize all the despatches on file in the telegraph offices which have been sent from Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York, Hartford, Boston, and other cities within the last six months, as I feel confident they will on examination prove many persons not now suspected to have been acting as spies and traitors.
“2. The government to establish as soon as possible telegraphic communication, by means of submarine cables, between some of our principal ports on the sea-board and the nearest telegraph line communicating with Washington, so that the department can almost instantly communicate with the commanding officer at any particular point desired.
“3. In each department of the government to adopt a cipher with its confidential agent at important points of the country, so that they can communicate confidentially by telegraph.
“I consider it very important that the government should have the most reliable telegraph communication with its principal forts on the Atlantic coast.
“If there is any information that I possess that would be of service to you in carrying out the wishes of the government in regard to telegraph matters it will afford me pleasure to give it.