History of the United States from the Compromise Of 1850

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tions whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. In reply, President Buchanan echoed the sentiment.1 Between August 16 and September 1, four hundred messages were sent through the cable.2 The last one, to Cyrus W. Field, was read by him at a great celebration over the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tions whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. In reply, President Buchanan echoed the sentiment.1 Between August 16 and September 1, four hundred messages were sent through the cable.2 The last one, to Cyrus W. Field, was read by him at a great celebration over the success of the enterprise, which took place September 1, in New York City. Then, through a defect which could not be remedied, the Atlantic telegraph became silent. Again had the enterprise failed. But Field was not one to be crushed; he kept at work. The crash of civil conflict delayed the undertaking, but the year I860 saw a cable successfully laid, and a permanent telegraphic connection established between Europe and America. Although the attempt to establish an American steamship line, which should carry passengers and mails as swiftly and safely across the Atlantic as did the English vessels, had failed, and although the Atlantic telegraph was not for the time a success, yet these noble efforts show to what extent the energetic spirits of the country were willing to embark in hazardous enterprises, and that they sought after honor as well as profit. Such attempts serve to bring out clearly by contrast the successful results obtained in other undertakings, and they emphasize for our purpose the great prosperity of the country from 1846 to 1857. What were the causes of this extraordinary material development? In the main, they were the same as those of our growth from the adoption of the Constitution?those which gave rise to the well-being that Webster rejoiced at in his Plymouth speech of 1820. Two thousand miles westward from the rock where their fathers landed, ho said, may now be found the sons of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields, rearing towns and villages....