90 PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS. 



the subject, and to make their conclusions a matter of record, which 

 may be appealed to hereafter should any question arise with regard to 

 his conduct in the premises. 



Your committee do not conceive it to be necessary to follow Mr. 

 Morse through all the details of his elaborate attack. Fortunately, a 

 plain statement of a few leading facts will be sufficient to place 

 the essential points of the case in a clear light. 



The deposition already referred to was reluctantly given, and under 

 the compulsion of legal process, by Prof Henry, before the Hon. Geo. 

 S. Hillard, United States commissioner, on the 7th of September, 1849. 



The following is the statement of the Hon. S. P. Chase, (now gov- 

 ernor of Ohio,) one of the counsel in the telegraph cases, in a letter 

 to Professor Henry, dated Columbus, Ohio, November 26, 1856 : 



In the year 1849, 1 was professionally employed in the defence of 

 certain gentlemen engaged in the business of telegraphing between 

 Louisville and New Orleans, against whom a bill of complaint had 

 been filed in the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of 

 Kentucky. The object of the bill was to restrain the defendants, my 

 clients, from the use in telegraphing of a certain instrument called 

 the Columbian Telegraph, on the ground that it was an infringe- 

 ment upon the rights of the complainants under the patents granted 

 to Professor Morse. It therefore became my duty, in the preparation 

 of their defence, to ascertain the precise nature and extent of their 

 rights. With this view I called upon you, in August or September 

 of that year, for your deposition. It was taken before George S. 

 Hillard, esq., a United States commissioner for the district of Massa- 

 chusetts, in Boston. I remember very well that you were unwilling to 

 be involved in the controversy, even as a witness, and that you only 

 submitted to be examined in compliance with the requirements of law. 

 Not one of your statements was volunteered. They were all called out 

 by questions propounded either verbally or in writing. I was not suf- 

 ficiently familiar at the time with the precise merits of the case to 

 know what would or would not be important, and therefore insisted on 

 a full statement, not merely of the general history of electro-magnet- 

 ism as applied to telegraphing, but of all your own discoveries in 

 that science having relation to the same art, and of all that had passed 

 between yourself and Professor Morse connected with these discoveries 

 or with the telegraph. You could not have refused to respond to the 

 questions propounded, without subjecting yourself to judicial animad- 

 version and constraint. Nothing in what you testified, or your manner 

 of testifying, suggested to me the idea that you were animated by any 

 desire to arrogate undue merit to yourself, or to detract from the just 

 claims of Prolessor Morse. 



S. P. CHASE. 



Previous to this deposition, Mr. Morse, as appears from his own 

 letters and statements, entertained for Prof, Henry the warmest feel- 

 ings of personal regard, and the highest esteem for his character as a 



