What Hath God Wrought Read Free

professor was in love with Annie.) The quotation proved the perfect choice, capturing the inventor’s own passionate Christian faith and conception of himself as an instrument of providence.
    As Morse later commented, the message “baptized the American Telegraph with the name of its author”: God. 1 The American public appreciated the significance of the message, for biblical religion then permeated the culture in ways both conventional and sincerely felt. Morse’s invocation of the Bible typified that recurrent importance of religion which has long characterized American history.
    Morse’s synthesis of science and religion represented the predominant American attitude of the time; only a few eccentrics believed there was any conflict between scientific and religious truth. Revelation and reason alike, Americans were confident, led to knowledge of God and His creation. Religious awakening, expansion of education, interest in science, and technological progress all went hand in hand. Evangelists welcomed technological advances along with mass education as helping them spread the good news of Christ. Literature, like education and science, was saturated with religious meanings and motivations. The writers of America’s literary renaissance took advantage of the improvements in communications technology to market their art and their moral values to larger and more widespread audiences than writers had ever before enjoyed.
    A combination of Protestantism with the Enlightenment shaped American culture and institutions. Morse’s telegraph appealed to both these strains in American ideology, for it fostered what contemporaries called the brotherhood of man and could also be viewed as promoting the kingdom of God. Many Americans interpreted their nation’s destiny in religious terms, as preparing the world for a millennial age of free institutions, peace, and justice. A Methodist women’s magazine explained the role that the electric telegraph would play in this process, revealing both the optimism and the arrogance characteristic of the time:
     
    This noble invention is to be the means of extending civilization, republicanism, and Christianity over the earth. It must and will be extended to nations half-civilized, and thence to those now savage and barbarous. Our government will be the grand center of this mighty influence…. The beneficial and harmonious operation of our institutions will be seen, and similar ones adopted. Christianity must speedily follow them, and we shall behold the grand spectacle of a whole world, civilized, republican, and Christian…. Wars will cease from the earth. Men “shall beat their swords into plough shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.”…Then shall come to pass the millennium. 2
     
    The first practical application of Morse’s invention—to report a political party convention—was no accident. The formation of mass political parties, their organization on local, state, and national levels, the application of government patronage to knit them together, their espousal of rival political programs, and their ability to command the attention of the public all combined to give this period of American history its distinctive, highly politicized quality. The rise of mass parties has often been traced to the broadening of the franchise (the right to vote) to include virtually all adult white males. However, no such parties with mass followings could have come into existence without the revolution in communication. Many newspapers of the time were the organs of a political party, existing to propagate its point of view; influential policymakers might be former journalists. 3 The newspapers quickly enlisted the telegraph in their quest to gather and distribute information; the newspapers of New York City formed the Associated Press wire service “to secure the transmission of news from the South, and particularly from the seat of War in Mexico, in advance of all ordinary channels.”