"conservatism," in order
not to give it a harder name.

The room of the Committee on Commerce was placed at his disposal, and
there he hopefully strung his ten miles of wire and connected them with
his instruments. Outwardly calm but inwardly nervous and excited, as he
realized that he was facing a supreme moment in his career, he patiently
explained to all who came, Congressmen, men of science, representatives
of foreign governments, and hard-headed men of business, the workings of
the instrument and proved its feasibility. The majority saw and wondered,
but went away unconvinced. On February 21, President Martin Van Buren and
his entire Cabinet, at their own special request, visited the room and
saw the telegraph in operation. But no action was taken by Congress; the
time was not yet ripe for the general acceptance of such a revolutionary
departure from the slow-going methods of that early period. While
individuals here and there grasped the full significance of what the
mysterious ticking of that curious instrument foretold, they were vastly
in the minority. The world, through its representatives in the capital
city of the United States, remained incredulous.

Among those who at once recognized the possibilities of the invention was
Francis O.J. Smith, member of Congress from Portland, Maine, and chairman
of the Committee on Commerce. He was a lawyer of much shrewdness and a
man of great energy, and he very soon offered to become pecuniarily
interested in the invention. Morse was, unfortunately, not a keen judge
of men. Scrupulously honest and honorable himself, he had an almost
childlike faith in the integrity of others, and all through his life he
fell an easy victim to the schemes of self-seekers. In this case a man of
more acute intuition would have hesitated, and would have made some
enquiries before allying himself with one whose ideas of honor proved
eventually to be so at variance with his own. Smith did so much in later
years to injure Morse, and to besmirch his fame and good name, that I
think it only just to give the following estimate of his character, made
by the late Franklin Leonard Pope in an article contributed to the
"Electrical World" in 1895:--

"A sense of justice compels me to say that the uncorroborated statements
of F.O.J. Smith, in any matter affecting the credit or honor due to
Professor Morse, should be allowed but little weight.... For no better
reason than that Morse in 1843-1844 courte