In 1840 the Mormons had settled at Nauvoo, Illinois. They were led by Joseph Smith, and not only proposed to run a new kind of religion, but introduced polygamy into it. The people who lived near them attacked them, killed Smith, and drove the Mormons to Iowa, opposite Omaha.
In 1844 occurred the building of the magnetic telegraph, invented by Samuel F. B. Morse. The line was from Baltimore to Washington, or vice versa, authorities failing to agree on this matter. It cost thirty thousand dollars, and the boys who delivered the messages made more out of it then than the stockholders did.
Fulton having invented and perfected the steamboat in 1805 and started the Clermont on the North River at the dizzy rate of five miles per hour, and George Stephenson having in 1814 made the first locomotive to run on a track, the people began to feel that theosophy was about all they needed to place them on a level with the seraphim and other astral bodies.