“Could the scheme have been meant as a blow at your business in Europe?
“Very respectfully yours,
“Edward Bates.”
When on April 23d he received two more letters in the same handwriting, one postmarked Springfield, Ill., April 18th, and the other Nashville, Tenn., April 19th, and evidently designed “to entrap him,” he wrote at once to Mr. Chase:
“I propose to take no further notice of them than to place copies in your possession and in the hands of the Attorney-General, that such action may be taken in regard to them as may be deemed necessary.”
After this there was no further suggestion of trouble.
This very characteristic business note was found among his papers of this year:
“As we are all liable to be called away by death at any time, I should esteem it a favor if you would indorse the amount paid you by C. W. Field & Co. on the 5th instant, on my bond, and send the same to my office, as you proposed.”
It was on May 1st that he addressed the American Geographical and Statistical Society, and it is possible to make but a short extract from his speech:
“The London Times said truly: ‘We nearly went to war with America because we had not a telegraph across the Atlantic.’ It is at such a moment that England feels the need of communicating with her colonies on this side of the ocean. And here I may mention a fact not generally known—that, during the excitement of the Trent affair a person connected with the English government applied to Messrs. Glass, Elliott & Co., of London, to know for what sum they would manufacture a cable and lay it across the Atlantic; to which they replied that they would both manufacture and lay it down for £675,000, and that it should be in full operation by the 12th day of July of this year. Well might England afford to pay the whole cost of such a work; for in sixty days’ time she expended more money in preparation for war with this country than the whole cost of manufacturing and laying several good cables between Newfoundland and Ireland.”