His brother’s arrest for murder, however, was, by a considerable measure, the worst. And for Sam, it couldn’t have come at a less opportune time. Since his meeting in June with Secretary of the Navy George Badger, Sam had been awaiting the passage of the naval appropriation bill with its promised allocation for the development of his harbor defense system. As late as September 5, he had received word from a Washington friend that the bill would most likely be “taken up and passed” within a matter of days. By then, Sam, brimming with confidence, had already drafted a prospectus for his Submarine Battery Company, approached a small group of investors, and sold five hundred shares at fifty dollars each.1 Less than a week after he received his friend’s encouraging news, however, Washington was shaken by a political upheaval. On September 11, Naval Secretary Badger—along with the rest of the Cabinet, excepting Secretary of State Daniel Webster—resigned in protest over President Tyler’s fiscal policies.2 Badger’s replacement, a Virginia judge named Abel P.
