Mr. Harvey to Mr. Seward.
Sir: I have the honor to receive your despatch No. 140, accompanied by a correspondence between the Secretary of State and the chairman of the Committee on Commerce of the Senate, in relation to a project for an inter-continental telegraph to connect the eastern and western hemispheres by way of Behring’s Strait.
The views of the department on this important subject are stated with so much clearness, and ability, and force, and the valuable information embodied in the general résumé of the practicability and utility of the enterprise is so instructive, that I venture to believe and hope that Congress will accept and adopt them as the basis of prompt and efficient legislation,
Whatever opinions I may have heretofore entertained as to the necessity of telegraphic communication between the Old and New World, considering the proposition mainly with regard to commercial and material interests, I am satisfied, from some observation and practical experience, that in a political or public aspect it is of still greater consequence for the present and for the future.
All the first intelligence of affairs in the United States brought across the ocean by the steamers plying between European and American ports is now distributed over Europe, either upon the authority of imperfect, partial, distorted [Page 317] or fictitious reports furnished by employés of the principal British newspapers temporarily or permanently residing in our large cities, or through telegraphic agencies on this side, which are equally unreliable, prejudiced, and illiberal. The consequence is that a false coloring is given to almost every fact, and the public mind is constantly misled by malicious or ignorant misrepresentation. Bo systematic has this course of conduct become, that those who are better informed as to the real state of affairs at home and the probable turn of events generally read these telegraphic reports in a directly opposite sense to that given and intended, and it may be asserted that, in nearly nine cases out of ten, the contrary conclusion proves to be the correct one when the full accounts are received—the very accounts, too, upon which these false telegraphic reports were professedly predicated.
It will thus be seen at a. glance how much the national cause has suffered abroad from the want of a direct and immediate means of telegraphic communication, such as would enable us to be heard fairly, would allow the actual facts to speak for themselves, and at the same time would enable the public authorities to confer freely with their agents and to correct these errors and misapprehensions in our foreign intercourse, which have grown to be serious and embarrassing in many essential respects.
Looking at such a telegraphic connexion with application to the actual position of the country, its importance cannot be well overstated, and there is hardly any undertaking which for substantial merit deserves to commend itself more to public favor, or which would be so serviceable to the nation in its exterior relations.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of Stale.