312 BULLETIN OP THE 



Regents : . . . and I now embrace the first opportunity of 

 bringing the subject officially to your notice, and asking from you 

 an investigation into the justice of the charges alleged against 

 me. And this I do most earnestly, with the desire that when we 

 shall all have passed from this stage of being, no imputation of 

 having attempted to evade in silence so grave a charge shall rest 

 on me, — nor on you, of having continued to devolve upon me 

 duties of the highest responsibility, after that was known to some 

 of you individually, which if true — should render me entirely 

 unworthy of your confidence. Duty to the Board of Regents, as 

 well as regard to my own memory, to my family, and to the truth 

 of history, demands that I should lay this matter before you, and 

 place in your hands the documents necessary to establish the 

 veracity of my testimony so falsely impeached, and the integrity 

 of my motives so wantonly assailed."* 



Professor Felton, President of Harvard University, Chairman 

 of the select Committee appointed by the Regents to investigate 

 the charge, after a careful examination of all the documentary 

 evidence, submitted a full report, from which it is only necessary 

 to make the following extracts with reference to the Morse 

 pamphlet: "The first thing which strikes the reader of this article 

 is that its title is a misnomer. f It is simply an assault upon 

 Professor Henry; an attempt to disparage his character; to 

 deprive him of his honors as a scientific discoverer ; to impeach his 

 credibility as a witness and his integrity as a man. It is a dis- 

 ingenuous piece of sophistical argument, such as an unscrupulous 

 advocate might employ to pervert the truth, misrepresent the 

 facts, and misinterpret the language in which the facts belonging 

 to the other side of the case are stated. . . . Your committee 

 come unhesitatingly to the conclusion that Mr. Morse has failed to 

 substantiate any one of the charges he has made against Profes- 

 sor Henry, although the burden of proof lay upon him ; and 

 that all the evidence — including the unbiased admissions of Mr. 

 Morse himself — is on the other side. Mv. Morse's charges Hot 

 only remain unproved, but they are positively disproved." And 

 the committee submitted resolutions of condemnation on the one 

 side, and of respect and confidence on the other, which were 

 unanimously adopted by the Regents, and made a part of the 

 permanent record. | 



* Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. 85, 86. 



f " A Defence against the injurious deductions drawn from the Depo- 

 sition of Professor Joseph Henry, by Samuel F. B. Morse." 



X Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. 89-98. When Prof. Morse in his 

 letter to Prof. Sears C. Walker, dated Washington, Jan, 1st, 1848, wrote 

 thus : " To Prof. Henry is unquestionably due the honor of the discovery 

 of a fact in science which proves the practicability of exciting magnetism 

 through a long coil or at a distance, either to deflect a needle or mag- 

 netize soft iron ;" and wlien again some six years later, the same Prof. 

 Morse in his pamphlet dated Locust Grove, New York, December, 1853, 



86 



