Part 13

"Various forms of telegraphic intercourse had been devised before; electro-magnetism had been studied by _savants_ for many years; Franklin even had experimented with the transmission of electricity through great lengths of wire. It was reserved for Morse to combine the results of many fragmentary and unsuccessful attempts, and put them, after many years of trial, to a practical use; and though his claims to the invention have been many times attacked in the press and in the courts, they have been triumphantly vindicated alike by the law and the verdict of the people, both at home and abroad. The Chief Justice of the United States in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in one of the Morse cases, said: 'It can make no difference whether the inventor derived his information from books or from conversation with men skilled in the science; and the fact that Morse sought and obtained the necessary information and counsel from the best sources and acted upon it, neither impairs his right as an inventor, nor detracts from his merits.'"

It will be remembered that soon after his first successful experiment, Morse was harassed by protracted litigation, and that many attempts were made to deprive him of the just rewards of his great invention. True, he had been preceded along the same lines by great discoveries. This fact no man recognized more unreservedly than himself. He was the inventor, his work, that of gathering up and applying the marvellous discoveries of others to the practical purposes of human life. As stated by Mr. Garfield:

"His to interpret to the world that subtle and mysterious element with which the thinkers of the human race had so long been occupied. As Franklin had exhibited the relation between lightning and the electric fluid, so Oersted exhibited the relation between magnetism and electricity. From 1820 to 1825, his discovery was further developed by Davy and Sturgeon of England, and Arago and Ampere of France. The electro-magnetic telegraph is the embodiment, I might say the incarnation, of many centuries of thought, of many generations of effort to elicit from Nature one of her deepest mysteries. No one man, no one century, could have achieved it. It is the child of the human race, the heir of all ages. How wonderful are the steps that led to its creation! The very name of this telegraphic instrument bears record of its history--Electric, Magnetic.

"The first, named from the bit of yellow amber whose qualities of attraction and repulsion were discovered by a Grecian philosopher twenty-four centuries ago, and the second, from Magnesia, the village of Asia Minor where first was found the lodestone, whose touch turned the needle forever toward the north. These were the earliest forms in which that subtle, all-pervading force revealed itself to men. In the childhood of the race men stood dumb in the presence of its more terrible manifestations. When it gleamed in the purple aurora, or shot dusky-red from the clouds, it was the eye-flash of an angry God before whom mortals quailed in helpless fear."

More than three centuries ago, Shakespeare put into the mouth of one of his creations the words,

"I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes."

The words spoken in jest were in the nature of a prophecy. After the passing of many generations, in a country unknown to the great bard, Morse, in the words of Mr. Cox, one of the most eloquent of his eulogists--

"Gave to the universal people the means of speedy and accurate intelligence, and so stormed at once the castles of the terrible Giant Doubt and Giant Despair. He has saved time, shortened the hours of toil, accumulated and intensified thought by the rapidity and terseness of electric messages. He has celebrated treaties. Go to the uttermost parts of the earth; go beneath the deep sea; to the land where snows are eternal, or to the tropical realms where the orange blooms in the air of mid-winter, and you will find this clicking, persistent, sleepless instrument ready to give its tireless wing to your purpose."

It was my good fortune to serve in the House of Representatives with Mr. Stephens of Georgia, and Mr. Wood of New York, both of whom more than a third of a century before had given their votes in favor of the appropriation that made it possible for Morse to prosecute experiments fraught with such stupendous blessing to our race. The member who reported back the bill from the Committee on Commerce, with favorable recommendations, and then supported it by an eloquent speech upon the floor of the House, was Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts. No public man I have ever known impressed me more favorably than did Mr. Winthrop. He had been the close friend of Everett, Choate, Webster, and Clay. He was the last survivor of as brilliant a coterie of party leaders and statesmen as our country has ever known. On a visit he made to the House of Representatives, of which he had many years before been the Speaker, business was at once suspended, and the members from all parts of the Great Hall gathered about him. In a letter to the Morse Memorial meeting in Boston, Mr. Winthrop stated that he was present in the Capitol while the first formal messages were passing along the magic cords between Washington and Baltimore. He referred to the declination read by Senator Wright in his presence, of the nomination to the Vice-Presidency tendered him, and added:

"All this gave us the most vivid impression, not only that a new kind of _wire-pulling_ had entered into politics, but that a mysterious and marvellous power of the air had at length been subdued and trained to the service of mankind."

It is an interesting fact in this connection, to note that the little girl, Miss Ellsworth, who brought to Mr. Morse the joyful tidings of the passage of the bill on that early May morning in 1843, was rewarded by being requested by the great inventor to write the first message that ever passed over the wire. When she selected,

"What hath God wrought,"

words to find utterance by all tongues--she builded better than she knew, for in the words of Speaker Blaine:

"The little thread of wire placed as a timid experiment between the national capital and a neighboring city grew, and lengthened, and multiplied with almost the rapidity of the electric current that darted along its iron nerves, until, within his own lifetime, continent was bound to continent, hemisphere answered through ocean's depths to hemisphere, and an encircled globe dashed forth his eulogy in the unmatched eloquence of a grand achievement."

Words of praise, spoke by Dr. Prime, of the great inventor just after he had passed from the world, to which he left such a heritage, can never lose their interest:

"Morse in his coffin is a recollection never to fade. He lay like an ancient prophet or sage such as the old masters painted for Abraham, or Isaiah. His finely chiselled features, classical in their mould and majestic in repose, and heavy flowing beard; the death calm upon the brow that for eighty years had concealed a teeming brain, and that placid beauty that lingers upon the face of the righteous dead, as if the freed spirit had left a smile upon its forsaken home--these are the memories that remain of the most illustrious and honored private citizen that the New World has yet given to mankind."

IX ALONG THE BYPATHS OF HISTORY

THE WIDOW OF GEN. GAINES CLAIMS PROPERTY AT NEW ORLEANS WORTH $30,000,000--HER SUCCESS AFTER MUCH LITIGATION--THE WIDOW OF JOHN H. EATON, SECRETARY OF WAR--A CLOUD ON HER REPUTATION--HER HUSBAND A FRIEND OF GEN. JACKSON--A DUEL BETWEEN RANDOLPH AND CLAY--HOSTILITY OF THE LEADERS OF WASHINGTON SOCIETY TO MRS. EATON--SECRETARY EATON DISLIKED BY HIS COLLEAGUES--CONSEQUENT DISRUPTION OF JACKSON'S CABINET--MRS. EATON'S POVERTY IN HER OLD AGE.

Nearly a third of a century ago, as the guest in a Washington house, I had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Gaines, the widow of General Edmund P. Gaines, a distinguished officer of the War of 1812, and Mrs. Eaton, the widow of the Hon. John H. Eaton of Tennessee, for a number of years a Senator from that State, and later Secretary of War during the administration of President Jackson. Their names suggested interesting events in our history, I gladly availed myself of the invitation to meet them.

I found Mrs. Gaines an old lady of small stature, with a profusion of curls, and gifted with rare powers of conversation. She spoke freely of her great lawsuits, one of which was then pending in the Supreme Court of the United States. As I listened, I thought of the wonderful career of the little woman before me. Few names, a half-century ago, were more familiar to the reading public than that of Myra Clark Gaines. She was born in New Orleans in the early days of the century; was the daughter of Daniel Clark, who died in 1813, the owner of a large portion of the land upon which the city of New Orleans was afterwards built. She was his only heir, and soon after attaining her majority, instituted a suit, or series of suits, for the recovery of her property. After years of litigation, the seriously controverted fact of her being the lawful heir of Daniel Clark was established, and the contest, which was to wear out two generations of lawyers, began in dead earnest. The value of the property involved in the litigation then exceeded thirty millions of dollars. At the time I saw her, she had just arrived from her home in New Orleans to be present at the argument of one of her suits in the Supreme Court. She had already received nearly six millions of dollars by successful litigation, and she assured me that she intended to live one hundred years longer, if necessary, to obtain her rights, and that she expected to recover every dollar to which she was rightfully entitled. The air of confidence with which she spoke, and the pluck manifested in her every word and motion, convinced me at once that the only possible question as to her ultimate success was that of time. And so indeed it proved, for,

"When like a clock worn out with eating time, The wheels of weary life at last stood still,"

numerous suits, in which she had been successful in the lower courts, were still pending in the higher.

She told me with apparent satisfaction, during the interview, that she could name over fifty lawyers who had been against her since the beginning of her contest, all of whom were now in their graves. Her litigation was the one absorbing thought of her life, her one topic of conversation.

General Gaines had died many years before, and her legal battles,-- extending through several decades and against a host of adversaries, --she had, with courage unfaltering and patience that knew no shadow of weariness, prosecuted single-handed and alone.

In view of the enormous sums involved, the length of time consumed in the litigation, the number and ability of counsel engaged, and the antagonisms engendered, the records of our American courts will be searched in vain for a parallel to the once famous suit of Myra Clark Gaines against the city of New Orleans.

At the close of this interview, I was soon in conversation with the older of the two ladies. Mrs. Eaton was then near the close of an eventful life, one indeed without an approximate parallel in our history. Four score years ago, there were few persons in the village of Washington to whom "Peggy O'Neal" was a stranger. Her father was the proprietor of a well-known, old-style tavern on Pennsylvania Avenue, which, during the sessions of Congress, included among its guests many of the leading statesmen of that day. Of this number were Benton, Randolph, Eaton, Grundy, and others equally well known. The daughter, a girl of rare beauty, on account of her vivacity and grace soon became a great favorite with all. She was without question one of the belles of Washington.

It was difficult for me to realize that the care-worn face before me was that of the charming Peggy O'Neal of early Washington days. Distress, poverty, slander possibly, had measurably wrought the sad change, but after all,

"the surest poison is Time."

Traces of her former self still lingered, however, and her erect form and dignified mien would have challenged respect in any assembly.

While yet in her teens, she had married a purser in the Navy, who soon after died by his own hand, while on a cruise in the Mediterranean. A year or two after his death, with reputation somewhat clouded, she married the Honorable John H. Eaton, then a Senator from Tennessee. He was many years her senior, was one of the leading statesmen of the day, and had rendered brilliant service in the campaign which terminated so triumphantly at New Orleans. He was the devoted personal and political friend of General Jackson, his earliest biographer, and later his earnest advocate for the Presidency. Indeed, the movement having in view the election of "Old Hickory" was inaugurated by Major Eaton assisted by Amos Kendall and Francis P. Blair.

This was in 1824, before the days of national conventions. Eaton visited several of the States in the interest of his old commander, and secured the hearty co-operation of many of the most influential men. It was in large degree through his personal efforts that the Legislatures of Pennsylvania and Tennessee proposed the name of Andrew Jackson for the great office.

The Presidential contest of that year marked an epoch in our political history. It was at the close of the Monroe administration, "the era of good feeling." The struggle for supremacy which immediately followed was the precursor of an era of political strife which left its deep and lasting impress upon the country. Of the four candidates in the field, two were members of the outgoing Cabinet of President Monroe: John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, and William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury. The remaining candidates were Henry Clay, the eloquent and accomplished Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Andrew Jackson, "the hero of New Orleans." The candidates were all of the same party, that founded by Jefferson; the sun of the once powerful Federalists had set, and the Whig party was yet in the future.

No one of the candidates receiving a majority of the electoral vote, the election devolved upon the House of Representatives. Mr. Clay being the lowest upon the list, the choice by constitutional requirement was to be made from his three competitors. The influence of the Kentucky statesman was thrown to Mr. Adams, who was duly elected, receiving the votes of a bare majority of the States. The determining vote was given by the sole representative from Illinois, the able and brilliant Daniel P. Cook, a friend of Mr. Clay. The sad sequel was the defeat of Cook at the next Congressional election, his immediate retirement from public life, and early and lamented death.

Not less sad was the effect of the vote just given upon the political fortunes of Henry Clay. His high character and distinguished public services were scant protection against the clamor that immediately followed his acceptance of the office of Secretary of State tendered him by President Adams. "Bargain and Corruption" was the terrible slogan of his enemies in his later struggles for the Presidency and its echo scarcely died out with that generation.

In this connection, the bitter words spoken in the Senate by John Randolph will be recalled: "the coalition between the Puritan and the blackleg." The duel which followed, now historic, stands alone in the fierce conflicts of men. Whatever the faults of Randolph, let it be remembered to his eternal honor, that after receiving at short range the fire of Mr. Clay, he promptly discharged his own pistol in the air. Even after the lapse of eighty years how pleasing these words: "At which Mr. Clay, throwing down his own pistol, advanced with extended hand to Mr. Randolph, who taking his hand quietly remarked, 'You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay,' to which the latter exclaimed, 'Thank God the obligation is no greater!'"

Immediately upon the defeat of Jackson, his friends began the agitation which resulted in his overwhelming triumph over Adams, in 1828. Chief among his supporters in this, as in his former contest, was Major Eaton. The untiring devotion of Jackson to his friends is well known. It rarely found more striking illustration than in the selection of Eaton as Secretary of War, and in the zeal with which he sustained him through good and evil report alike, during later years.

When it became known that Senator Eaton was to hold a seat in the Cabinet of the new administration, the fashionable circles of the capital were deeply agitated, and protests earnest and vehement assailed the ears of the devoted President. The objections urged were not against Major Eaton, but against his beautiful and accomplished wife. Rumors of an exceedingly uncomplimentary character, that had measurably died out with time, were suddenly revived against Mrs. Eaton, and gathered force and volume with each passing day. It is hardly necessary to say that this hostility was, in the main, from her own sex. To all remonstrances and appeals, however, President Jackson turned a deaf ear. The kindness shown by the mother of Mrs. Eaton to the wife of the President during a former residence, and while he was a Senator, in Washington, had never been forgotten. It will be remembered that during the late Presidential contest not only had Jackson himself been the object of merciless attack, but even his invalid wife did not escape. Divorced from her first husband because of his cruel treatment, she had married Jackson, when he was a young lawyer in Nashville, many years before. As the result of the aspersions cast upon her, the once famous duel was evolved in which Charles Dickinson fell by the hand of Jackson in 1806.

After his election, but before his inauguration, Mrs. Jackson died, the victim of calumny as her husband always believed. A few days after he had turned away from that new-made grave, he was in the turmoil of politics at the national capital. With the past fresh in his memory, it is not strange that he espoused the cause of his faithful friend, and the daughter of the woman who had befriended one dearer to him than his own life. Thoroughly convinced of the innocence of Mrs. Eaton, he made her cause his own, and to the end he knew no variableness or shadow of turning.

The new administration was not far upon its tempestuous voyage before the trouble began. The relentless hostility of the leaders of Washington society against Mrs. Eaton was manifested in every possible way. Their doors were firmly closed against her. This, of itself, would have been of comparatively little moment, but serious consequences were to grow out of it. From private parlors and drawing-rooms the controversy soon reached the little coterie that constituted the official family of President Jackson. While this is almost forgotten history now, one chapter of Jackson's biography published soon after the events mentioned, was headed, "Mr. Van Buren calls upon Mrs. Eaton." As is well known, the creed in action of the most suave of our presidents was,

"The statues of our stately fortunes Are sculptured with the chisel, not the axe."

Mr. Van Buren was Secretary of State, and one of the most agreeable and politic of statesmen. He was in line of succession to the great office, and understood well the importance of maintaining his hold upon President Jackson. A widower himself, the call upon which so much stress was laid at the time subjected the Secretary of State to no embarrassment at home. Not so, however, with three of his colleagues in the Cabinet: Mr. Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Branch of the Navy, and Mr. Berrien the Attorney-General. The wife of each of these gentlemen refused to return Mrs. Eaton's call, or to recognize her in any possible manner. No remonstrance on the part of the President could avail to secure even a formal exchange of courtesies on the part of these ladies. All this only intensified the determination on the part of the President to secure to the wife of the Secretary of War the social recognition to which he considered her justly entitled, but it would not avail; the purpose of the most resolute man on earth was powerless against a determination equal to his own. Never was more forcibly exemplified the truth of the old couplet:

"When a woman will, she will, you may depend on't, And when she won't, she won't, and there's an end on't."

As to how Mrs. Eaton meanwhile appeared to others, something may be gleaned from the statement of a distinguished gentleman who called at the home of the Secretary of War:

"I went to the house in the evening, and found assembled there a large company of gentlemen who paid assiduous court to the lady. Mrs. Eaton was not then the celebrated character she was destined ere long to be made. To me she seemed a strikingly beautiful and fascinating woman, all graciousness and vivacity--the life of the company."

That the discordant status of the households of the official advisers of the President was the topic of discussion among leading statesmen, may be inferred from the following extract from a letter written at the time by Daniel Webster:

"Mr. Van Buren has evidently, at this moment, quite the lead in influence and importance. He controls all the pages on the back stairs, and flatters what seems to be, at present, the Aaron's serpent among the President's desires, a settled purpose of making out of the lady of whom so much has been said, a person of reputation."

Of curious interest even now, is the closing sentence in Mr. Webster's letter, in which with prophetic ken he forecasts the effect of the Eaton controversy upon national politics: "It is odd enough, but too evident to be doubted, that the consequence of this dispute in the social and fashionable world is producing great political effects, and _may very probably determine who shall be successor to the present chief magistrate."_

As explanatory of the above quotation, it will be remembered that next to President Jackson, the two most prominent leaders of the dominant party were Vice-President Calhoun and Secretary of State Van Buren. The political forces were even then gathering around one or the other of these great leaders, and there was little question in official circles that the successor to Jackson would be either Van Buren or Calhoun. It was equally certain that the successful aspirant would be the one who had the good fortune to secure the powerful influence of Jackson. Chief among the friends of Calhoun were the Cabinet officers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien. The incumbent of the office of Postmaster-General--now for the first time a Cabinet office--was William T. Barry of Kentucky. He was the friend of Van Buren, and in the social controversy mentioned, he sided with the President and the Secretary of State as a champion of Mrs. Eaton. As to the views of the Vice-President upon the all-absorbing question, we have no information. Not being one of the official advisers of the President, he probably kept entirely aloof from a controversy no doubt in every way distasteful to him.