Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)

Mr. McKay, of North Carolina, who was the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, whose duty it became to present this item in the appropriation bill, fully admitted its illegality and wastefulness; but plead the necessity of providing for its payment, as the money had been earned by work and labor done on the faith of the government, and to withhold payment would be a wrong to laborers, and no punishment to the officers who had occasioned the illegal expenditure. A high officer had done this wrong. He was ready to join in a vote of censure upon him: but to repudiate the debt, and leave laboring people without pay for their work and materials was what he could not do. And thus ended the session with sanctioning an abuse of $700,000 in one item in the navy, which session had opened with a manly attempt to correct some of its extravagances. And thus have ended all similar attempts since. A powerful combined interest pushes forward an augmented navy, without regard to any object but their own interest in it. First, the politicians who raise a clamor of war at the return of each presidential canvass, and a cry for ships to carry it on. Next, the naval officers, who are always in favor of more ships to give more commands. And, thirdly, the contractors who are to build these ships, and get rich upon their contracts. These three parties combine to build ships, and Congress becomes a helpless instrument in their hands. The friends of economy, and of a wise national policy, which prefers cruisers and privateers to ships of the line, may deliver their complaints in vain. Ship building, and ship rotting, goes on unchecked, and even with accelerated speed; and must continue to so go on until the enormity of the abuse produces a revulsion which, in curing the abuse may nearly kill the navy itself.

CHAPTER CXXXIII.

PROFESSOR MORSE: HIS ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH

Communication of intelligence by concerted signals is as old as the human race, and by all, except the white race, remains where it was six thousand years ago. The smokes raised on successive hills to give warning of the approach of strangers, or enemies, were found to be the same by Frémont in his western explorations which were described by Herodotus as used for the same purpose by the barbarian nations of his time: the white race alone has made advances upon that rude and imperfect mode of communication, and brought the art to a marvellous perfection, but only after the intervention of thousands of years. It was not until the siege of Vienna by the Turks, that the very limited intelligence between the besieged in a city and their friends outside, was established by the telegraph: and it was not until the breaking out of the French revolution that that mode of intelligence was applied to the centre and to the circumference of a country: and at that point it was stationary for fifty years. It was reserved for our own day, and our own country to make the improvement which annihilates distance, which disregards weather and darkness, and which rivals the tongue and the pen in the precision and infinitude of its messages. Dr. Franklin first broached the idea of using electricity for communicating intelligence: Professor Morse gave practical application to his idea. This gentleman was a portrait painter by profession, and had been to Europe to perfect himself in his art. Returning in the autumn of 1832, and while making the voyage, the recent discoveries and experiments in electro-magnetism, and the affinity of electricity to magnetism, or rather their probable identity, became a subject of casual conversation between himself and a few of the passengers. It had recently been discovered that an electric spark could be obtained from a magnet, and this discovery had introduced a new branch of science, to wit: magneto-electricity. Dr. Franklin's experiments on the velocity of electricity, exceeding that of light, and exceeding 180,000 miles in a moment, the feasibility of making electricity the means of telegraphic intercourse, that is to say of writing at a distance, struck him with great force, and became the absorbing subject of his meditations. The idea of telegraphing by electricity was new to him. Fortunately he did not know that some eminent philosophers had before conceived the same idea, but without inventing a plan by which the thought could be realized. Knowing nothing of their ideas, he was not embarrassed or impeded by the false lights of their mistakes. As the idea was original with him, so was his plan. All previous modes of telegraphing had been by evanescent signs: the distinctive feature of Morse's plan was the self-recording property of the apparatus, with its ordinarily inseparable characteristic of audible clicks, answering the purposes of speech; for, in impressing the characters, the sounds emitted by the machinery gave notice of each that was struck, as well understood by the practised ear as the recorded language was by the eye. In this he became the inventor of a new art – the art of telegraphic recording, or imprinting characters telegraphically.

Mr. Morse then had his invention complete in his head, and his labor then begun to construct the machinery and types to reduce it to practice, in which having succeeded to the entire satisfaction of a limited number of observers in the years 1836 and '37, he laid it before Congress in the year 1838, made an exhibit of its working before a committee, and received a favorable report. Much time was then lost in vain efforts to procure patents in England and France, and returning to Congress in 1842, an appropriation of $30,000 was asked for to enable the inventor to test his discovery on a line of forty miles, between Washington and Baltimore. The appropriation was granted – the preparations completed by the spring of 1844, and messages exchanged instantaneously between the two points. The line was soon extended to New York, and since so multiplied, that the Morse electro-magnetic telegraph now works over 80,000 miles in America and 50,000 in Europe. It is one of the marvellous results of science, putting people who are thousands of miles apart in instant communication with the accuracy of a face to face conversation. Its wonderful advantages are felt in social, political, commercial and military communications, and, in conjunction with the steam car, is destined to work a total revolution in the art of defensive warfare. It puts an end to defensive war on the ocean, to the necessity of fortifications, except to delay for a few days the bombardment of a city. The approach of invaders upon any point, telegraphed through the country, brings down in the flying cars myriads of citizen soldiers, arms in hand and provisions in abundance, to overwhelm with numbers any possible invading force. It will dispense with fleets and standing armies, and all the vast, cumbrous, and expensive machinery of a modern army. Far from dreading an invasion, the telegraph and the car may defy and dare it – may invite any number of foreign troops to land – and assure the whole of them of death or captivity, from myriads of volunteers launched upon them hourly from the first moment of landing until the last invader is a corpse or a prisoner.

CHAPTER CXXXIV.

FREMONT'S SECOND EXPEDITION

"The government deserves credit for the zeal with which it has pursued geographical discovery." Such is the remark which a leading paper made upon the discoveries of Frémont, on his return from his second expedition to the Great West; and such is the remark which all writers will make upon all his discoveries who write history from public documents and outside views. With all such writers the expeditions of Frémont will be credited to the zeal of the government for the promotion of science; as if the government under which he acted had conceived and planned these expeditions, as Mr. Jefferson did that of Lewis and Clark, and then selected this young officer to carry into effect the instructions delivered to him. How far such history would be true in relation to the first expedition, which terminated in the Rocky Mountains, has been seen in the account which has been given of the origin of that undertaking, and which leaves the government innocent of its conception; and, therefore, not entitled to the credit of its authorship, but only to the merit of permitting it. In the second, and greater expedition, from which great political as well as scientific results have flowed, their merit is still less; for, while equally innocent of its conception, they were not equally passive to its performance – countermanding the expedition after it had begun; and lavishing censure upon the adventurous young explorer for his manner of undertaking it. The fact was, that his first expedition barely finished, Mr. Frémont sought and obtained orders for a second one, and was on the frontier of Missouri with his command when orders arrived at St. Louis to stop him, on the ground that he had made a military equipment which the peaceful nature of his geographical pursuit did not require! as if Indians did not kill and rob scientific men as well as others if not in a condition to defend themselves. The particular point of complaint was that he had taken a small mountain howitzer, in addition to his rifles: and which, he was informed, was charged to him, although it had been furnished upon a regular requisition on the commandant of the Arsenal at St. Louis, approved by the commander of the military department (Colonel, afterwards General Kearney). Mr. Frémont had left St. Louis, and was at the frontier, Mrs. Frémont being requested to examine the letters that came after him, and forward those which he ought to receive. She read the countermanding orders, and detained them! and Frémont knew nothing of their existence until after he had returned from one of the most marvellous and eventful expeditions of modern times – one to which the United States are indebted (among other things) for the present ownership of California, instead of seeing it a British possession. The writer of this View, who was then in St. Louis, approved of the course which his daughter had taken (for she had stopped the orders before he knew of it); and he wrote a letter to the department condemning the recall, repulsing the reprimand which had been lavished upon Frémont, and demanding a court-martial for him when he should return. The Secretary at War was then Mr. James Madison Porter, of Pennsylvania; the chief of the Topographical corps the same as now (Colonel Aberts), himself an office man, surrounded by West Point officers, to whose pursuit of easy service Frémont's adventurous expeditions was a reproach; and in conformity to whose opinions the secretary seemed to have acted. On Frémont's return, upwards of a year afterwards, Mr. William Wilkins, of Pennsylvania, was Secretary at War, and received the young explorer with all honor and friendship, and obtained for him the brevet of captain from President Tyler. And such is the inside view of this piece of history – very different from what documentary evidence would make it.

To complete his survey across the continent, on the line of travel between the State of Missouri and the tide-water region of the Columbia, was Frémont's object in this expedition; and it was all that he had obtained orders for doing; but only a small part, and to his mind, an insignificant part, of what he proposed doing. People had been to the mouth of the Columbia before, and his ambition was not limited to making tracks where others had made them before him. There was a vast region beyond the Rocky Mountains – the whole western slope of our continent – of which but little was known; and of that little, nothing with the accuracy of science. All that vast region, more than seven hundred miles square – equal to a great kingdom in Europe – was an unknown land – a sealed book, which he longed to open, and to read. Leaving the frontier of Missouri in May, 1843, and often diverging from his route for the sake of expanding his field of observation, he had arrived in the tide-water region of Columbia in the month of November; and had then completed the whole service which his orders embraced. He might then have returned upon his tracks, or been brought home by sea, or hunted the most pleasant path for getting back; and if he had been a routine officer, satisfied with fulfilling an order, he would have done so. Not so the young explorer who held his diploma from Nature, and not from the United States' Military Academy. He was at Fort Vancouver, guest of the hospitable Dr. McLaughlin, Governor of the British Hudson Bay Fur Company; and obtained from him all possible information upon his intended line of return – faithfully given, but which proved to be disastrously erroneous in its leading and governing feature. A southeast route to cross the great unknown region diagonally through its heart (making a line from the Lower Columbia to the Upper Colorado of the Gulf of California), was his line of return: twenty-five men (the same who had come with him from the United States) and a hundred horses, were his equipment; and the commencement of winter the time of starting – all with out a guide, relying upon their guns for support; and, in the last resort, upon their horses – such as should give out! for one that could carry a man, or a pack, could not be spared for food.

All the maps up to that time had shown this region traversed from east to west – from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco – by a great river called the Buena Ventura: which may be translated, the Good Chance. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course. Frémont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it. As a great river, he knew that it must have some rich bottoms; covered with wood and grass, where the wild animals would collect and shelter, when the snows and freezing winds drove them from the plains: and with these animals to live on, and grass for the horses, and wood for fires, he expected to avoid suffering, if not to enjoy comfort, during his solitary sojourn in that remote and profound wilderness. He proceeded – soon encountered deep snows which impeded progress upon the high lands – descended into a low country to the left (afterwards known to be the Great Basin, from which no water issues to any sea) – skirted an enormous chain of mountain on the right, luminous with glittering white snow – saw strange Indians, who mostly fled – found a desert – no Buena Ventura: and death from cold and famine staring him in the face. The failure to find the river, or tidings of it, and the possibility of its existence seeming to be forbid by the structure of the country, and hybernation in the inhospitable desert being impossible, and the question being that of life and death, some new plan of conduct became indispensable. His celestial observations told him that he was in the latitude of the Bay of San Francisco, and only seventy miles from it. But what miles! up and down that snowy mountain which the Indians told him no men could cross in the winter – which would have snow upon it as deep as the trees, and places where people would slip off, and fall half a mile at a time; – a fate which actually befell a mule, packed with the precious burden of botanical specimens, collected along a travel of two thousand miles. No reward could induce an Indian to become a guide in the perilous adventure of crossing this mountain. All recoiled and fled from the adventure. It was attempted without a guide – in the dead of winter – accomplished in forty days – the men and surviving horses – a woful procession, crawling along one by one: skeleton men leading skeleton horses – and arriving at Suter's Settlement in the beautiful valley of the Sacramento; and where a genial warmth, and budding flowers, and trees in foliage, and grassy ground, and flowing streams, and comfortable food, made a fairy contrast with the famine and freezing they had encountered, and the lofty Sierra Nevada which they had climbed. Here he rested and recruited; and from this point, and by way of Monterey, the first tidings were heard of the party since leaving Fort Vancouver.

Another long progress to the south, skirting the western base of the Sierra Nevada, made him acquainted with the noble valley of the San Joaquin, counterpart to that of the Sacramento; when crossing through a gap and turning to the left, he skirted the Great Basin; and, by many deviations from the right line home, levied incessant contributions to science from expanded lands, not described before. In this eventful exploration all the great features of the western slope of our continent were brought to light – the Great Salt Lake, the Utah Lake, the Little Salt Lake; at all which places, then desert, the Mormons now are; the Sierra Nevada, then solitary in the snow, now crowded with Americans, digging gold from its flanks; the beautiful valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, then alive with wild horses, elk, deer, and wild fowls, now smiling with American cultivation; the Great Basin itself, and its contents; the Three Parks; the approximation of the great rivers which, rising together in the central region of the Rocky Mountains, go off east and west, towards the rising and the setting sun: – all these, and other strange features of a new region, more Asiatic than American, were brought to light, and revealed to public view in the results of this exploration. Eleven months he was never out of sight of snow; and sometimes, freezing with cold, would look down upon a sunny valley, warm with genial heat; – sometimes panting with the summer's heat, would look up at the eternal snows which crowned the neighboring mountain. But it was not then that California was secured to the Union – to the greatest power of the New World – to which it of right belonged: but it was the first step towards the acquisition, and the one that led to it. That second expedition led to a third, just in time to snatch the golden California from the hands of the British, ready to clutch it. But of this hereafter. Frémont's second expedition was now over. He had left the United States a fugitive from his government, and returned with a name that went over Europe and America, and with discoveries bearing fruit which the civilized world is now enjoying.

CHAPTER CXXXV.

TEXAS ANNEXATION: SECRET ORIGIN; BOLD INTRIGUE FOR THE PRESIDENCY

In the winter of 1842-'3, nearly two years before the presidential election, there appeared in a Baltimore newspaper an elaborately composed letter on the annexation of Texas, written by Mr. Gilmer, a member of Congress from Virginia, urging the immediate annexation, as necessary to forestall the designs of Great Britain upon that young country. These designs, it was alleged, aimed at a political and military domination on our south-western border, with a view to abolition and hostile movements against us; and the practical part of the letter was an earnest appeal to the American people to annex the Texas republic immediately, as the only means of preventing such great calamities. This letter was a clap of thunder in a clear sky. There was nothing in the political horizon to announce or portend it. Great Britain had given no symptom of any disposition to war upon us, or to excite insurrection among our slaves. Texas and Mexico were at war, and to annex the country was to adopt the war: far from hastening annexation, an event desirable in itself when it could be honestly done, a premature and ill-judged attempt, upon groundless pretexts, could only clog and delay it. There was nothing in the position of Mr. Gilmer to make him a prime mover in the annexation scheme; and there was much in his connections with Mr. Calhoun to make him the reflector of that gentleman's opinions. The letter itself was a counterpart of the movement made by Mr. Calhoun in the Senate, in 1836, to bring the Texas question into the presidential election of that year; its arguments were the amplification of the seminal ideas then presented by that gentleman: and it was his known habit to operate through others. Mr. Gilmer was a close political friend, and known as a promulgator of his doctrines – having been the first to advocate nullification in Virginia.

Putting all these circumstances together, I believed, the moment I saw it, that I discerned the finger of Mr. Calhoun in that letter, and that an enterprise of some kind was on foot for the next presidential election – though still so far off. I therefore put an eye on the movement, and by observing the progress of the letter, the papers in which it was republished, their comments, the encomiums which it received, and the public meetings in which it was commended, I became satisfied that there was no mistake in referring its origin to that gentleman; and became convinced that this movement was the resumption of the premature and abortive attempt of 1836. In the course of the summer of 1843, it had been taken up generally in the circle of Mr. Calhoun's friends, and with the zeal and pertinacity which betrayed the spirit of a presidential canvass. Coincident with these symptoms, and indicative of a determined movement on the Texas question, was a pregnant circumstance in the executive branch of the government. Mr. Webster, who had been prevailed upon to remain in Mr. Tyler's cabinet when all his colleagues of 1841 left their places, now resigned his place, also – induced, as it was well known, by the altered deportment of the President towards him; and was succeeded first by Mr. Legare, of South Carolina, and, on his early death, by Mr. Upshur, of Virginia.

Mr. Webster was inflexibly opposed to the Texas annexation, and also to the presidential elevation of Mr. Calhoun; the two gentlemen, his successors, were both favorable to annexation, and one (Mr. Upshur) extremely so to Mr. Calhoun; so that, here were two steps taken in the suspected direction – an obstacle removed and a facility substituted. This change in the head of the State Department, upon whatever motive produced, was indispensable to the success of the Texas movement, and could only have been made for some great cause never yet explained, seeing the service which Mr. Webster did Mr. Tyler in remaining with him when the other ministers withdrew. Another sign appeared in the conduct of the President himself. He was undergoing another change. Long a democrat, and successful in getting office at that, he had become a whig, and with still greater success. Democracy had carried him to the Senate; whiggism elevated him to the vice-presidency; and, with the help of an accident, to the presidency. He was now settling back, as shown in a previous chapter, towards his original party, but that wing of it which had gone off with Mr. Calhoun in the nullification war – a natural line of retrogression on his part, as he had travelled it in his transit from the democratic to the whig camp. The papers in his interest became rampant for Texas; and in the course of the autumn, the rumor became current and steady that negotiations were in progress for the annexation, and that success was certain.

Arriving at Washington at the commencement of the session of 1843-'44, and descending the steps of the Capitol in a throng of members on the evening of the first day's sitting, I was accosted by Mr. Aaron V. Brown, a representative from Tennessee, with expressions of great gratification at meeting with me so soon; and who immediately showed the cause of his gratification to be the opportunity it afforded him to speak to me on the subject of the Texas annexation. He spoke of it as an impending and probable event – complimented me on my early opposition to the relinquishment of that country, and my subsequent efforts to get it back, and did me the honor to say that, as such original enemy to its loss and early advocate of its recovery, I was a proper person to take a prominent part in now getting it back. All this was very civil and quite reasonable, and, at another time and under other circumstances, would have been entirely agreeable to me; but preoccupied as my mind was with the idea of an intrigue for the presidency, and a land and scrip speculation which I saw mixing itself up with it, and feeling as if I was to be made an instrument in these schemes, I took fire at his words, and answered abruptly and hotly: That it was, on the part of some, an intrigue for the presidency and a plot to dissolve the Union – on the part of others, a Texas scrip and land speculation; and that I was against it.