fair idea of how he bore himself in the face of these new and manifold
trials, of how he sometimes erred in judgment and in action, but how
through all he was sincere and firm in his faith, and how, at last, he
was to find that home and that domestic bliss which he had all his life
so earnestly desired, but which had until the evening of his days been
denied to him.

Having won his great victory, retirement from the field of battle would
have best suited him. He was now fifty-three years of age, and he felt
that he had earned repose. To this end he sought to carry out his
long-cherished idea that the telegraph should become the property of the
Government, and he was willing to accept a very modest remuneration. As I
have said before, he and the other proprietors joined in offering the
telegraph to the Government for the paltry sum of $100,000. But the
Administration of that day seems to have been stricken with unaccountable
blindness, for the Postmaster-General, that same wise and sapient Cave
Johnson who had sought to kill the telegraph bill by ridicule in the
House, and in despite of his acknowledgment to Morse, reported: "That the
operation of the Telegraph between Washington and Baltimore had not
satisfied him that, under any rate of postage that could be adopted, its
revenues could be made equal to its expenditures." Congress was equally
lax, and so the Government lost its great opportunity, for when, in after
years, the question of government ownership again came up, it was found
that either to purchase outright or to parallel existing lines would cost
many more millions than it would have taken thousands in 1844.

The failure of the Government to appreciate the value of what was offered
to them was always a source of deep regret to Morse. For, while he
himself gained much more by the operation of private companies, the evils
which he had foretold were more than realized.