Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse (review)

Samuel F. B. Morse is a particularly problematic figure to write about. Best known today for his telegraph system, he was also a noted American artist and a controversial political figure in New York. Unlike earlier biographers, Kenneth Silverman has brought the diverse elements of Morse's life together by seeking to understand his religious faith and his political beliefs as crucial elements of his vision of himself and his nation. Indeed, like his father Jedediah Morse, a prominent Massachusetts pastor best known for his books on American geography, Samuel Morse believed that Protestantism and American liberty were intertwined.

Silverman provides considerable insight into Morse's experience as an art student in Britain and his experiences as a young artist struggling to create a distinctly American form of historical painting that focused on the great events and the political life of his young nation. His inspiration, however, came from the masterpieces of European art, and it was a younger generation, led by Thomas Cole, that created a distinct American school by drawing on the power of the American landscape. Morse's artistic ambitions were thwarted by the lack of patrons who could support the kind of painting he envisioned. To gain commissions, he had to settle for the life of an itinerant portrait painter. Morse's more lasting impact on American art came through his efforts in establishing the National Academy of Design, an organization run by artists that he deemed more appropriate to republican art than the American Academy established by John Trumbull and dominated by the very patrons and collectors who might have supported Morse's artistic ambitions. His failure to obtain a commission from Congress to paint one of the panels of the Capitol rotunda effectively marked the end of his career as a painter.

As Morse's artistic ambitions foundered in the 1830s, his effort to develop an electric telegraph offered another outlet for his ambition. But it initially took a back seat to his desire to preserve his Protestant republic from the hordes of Catholic immigrants that were coming to America. As Silverman shows us, Morse's experiences during a visit to Rome confirmed his view of Catholicism as a coercive religion opposed to liberty. Indeed, his first contribution to the debate on immigration was a series of articles on Catholicism that he subsequently collected under the title Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States (1835). Morse's anti-Catholicism subsequently led him into nativist politics and an unsuccessful candidacy for mayor of New York City, but, as Silverman demonstrates, his views remained remarkably naïve and ill suited to the rough and tumble of American politics.

Morse retained this same naiveté in the rough and tumble of commerce. Nonetheless, he played well the role of American inventor, by portraying himself as both the single originator of the electric telegraph and as defender of America's right to the invention against the claims of various European inventors. The telegraph, of course, is why Morse is so well known today and what makes him a figure of interest to readers of Technology and Culture. Silverman does an excellent job of discussing the invention, development, and diffusion of the new technology and provides what is probably the best-balanced analysis to date of the role of Morse and the many other individuals involved in this effort. "Ironically," he concludes, "Morse's claims for himself as an inventor rest most convincingly on the part of his work that he valued least, his dogged entrepreneurship" (p. 322). In reaching this conclusion Silverman agrees with recent scholarship on the telegraph and on invention and innovation that points to the crucial role played by those who bring together people with a variety of skills and talents to turn ideas into a commercial technology. Morse was one such person.

While drawing on the work of scholars in his effort to understand Morse and the world he...