THE SIMPLE IDEA OF AN ATLANTIC CABLE 41 
annual minimum subsidy for its official messages. When the 
Company’s officials tried to induce Congress also to lend a 
ship to help lay the cable and to grant a subsidy of seventy 
thousand dollars a year, opposition arose. Field, who had 
fallen ill in Newfoundland from overstrain, was hurriedly 
called to Washington. He found the American legislators 
less helpful and sporting than the British officials had been. 
The aristocratic nature of the British Government permitted 
reasonable power to intelligent leaders for assisting beneficial 
developments; the American idea was scattered responsibility 
and rough-and-tumble debates. 
The request made of the Government was a reasonable one. 
It asked only for aid equal to that granted in England. The 
criticism at Washington concerned the British terminals of 
the cable and the wealth of some of the New York supporters, 
such as Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, and Marshall Roberts. 
There was talk of laying a European cable directly from the 
shore of the United States. Field pointed out that such a line 
would have to be over a thousand miles longer than one from 
Newfoundland, and that the ocean bed to the south was 
deeper and more jagged. Despite his illness, he talked to 
nearly every member of Congress. 
Finally the bill passed the House by a majority of nineteen 
votes. Iwo weeks later, on March 3, it passed the Senate by 
one vote, but was said to be unconstitutional. Field quickly 
sought the Attorney General and asked for a prompt decision 
on this point. It was favorable. On the morning of March 4, 
1857, a few hours before he retired from office, President 
Pierce signed the bill. 
The hard fight for government aid to a pioneering effort 
aimed to benefit the nation had been won by as narrow a 
margin as was the case fifteen years before, when Professor 
Morse had given up hope before Congress in its late session 
voted funds for trying out the telegraph that he had invented. 
Henry Field wrote of the difficulties in getting Congress to 
