In 1900, more than 60 percent of Americans were still served by small rural post offices housed in general stores like this one in Ruidoso, New Mexico.
Born enslaved, “Stagecoach” Mary Fields, a popular figure, drove the mail by wagon in the Montana wilds around the turn of the twentieth century.
Postmaster General John Wanamaker, a brilliant merchant prince, wanted to revolutionize mail service as he had merchandising.
In 1902, Rural Free Delivery finally brought the mail to the homes of delighted agrarian and small-town Americans.
Postal savings banking encouraged thrift, moved cash from under the mattress into the economy, and especially benefited underserved Americans of modest means.
Postal savings customers could open an account with $1 but could not invest more than $500, later raised to $2,500. They received 2 percent interest, which pressured private banks to raise their own rate to 3 percent.
Some RFD carriers began their careers in horse-drawn wagons and ended them in trucks. This carrier weighs a baby as part of a public health program.
During World War I, mail to and from the troops abroad had to be transported by transatlantic ships.
Through its crucial early support of the infant aviation industry, the post gave Americans their fast Air Mail Service and a new means of transportation, eventually even by night.
Iconic airmail pilot “Wild Bill” Hopson died on the dangerous job at the age of thirty-eight.
The innovative technology of “Victory Mail” enabled even soldiers in World War II’s remote Pacific Theater to receive letters flown from home.
Wars had long provided postal employment opportunities for women, including Jeannette Lee, Chicago’s first female carrier, in 1944.
The forward-looking Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, tried to modernize an anachronistic post in desperate need of mechanization.
Overwhelmed workers in the antiquated Chicago post office, where operations famously ground to a halt in 1966
America’s highly automated twenty-first-century post handles 40 percent of the world’s mail and is its most productive and lowest-priced mail service.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The history of America’s post spans more than two centuries, and this book would not have been possible without the help of many postal scholars, employees, and enthusiasts. Anyone who studies American communications in general and the post office in particular stands on the shoulders of historian Richard R. John. His erudition is matched only by his generosity and enthusiasm in sharing it with others. I’m very grateful to the historians James McPherson, Richard Kielbowicz, and Philip Rubio, who also kindly read my manuscript and offered their comments and corrections. Any errors are mine alone.
The Smithsonian National Postal Museum is a wonderful resource that belongs on the agenda of any tourist visiting Washington, D.C. I thank Allen Kane, its director; Cheryl Ganz, emerita curator of philately; and Nancy Pope and Lynn Heidelbaugh, curators in its history department, for sharing their insights, as well as Marshall Emery, who supplied many of the book’s images from the museum’s archives. I’m also grateful for the help of John Fleckner, senior archivist at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History; F. Robert van der Linden, chairman of the Aeronautics Department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum; and Jeremy Johnston, curator and historian at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
I thank Jennifer Lynch, the USPS historian, particularly for her research on the post’s women and minority employees. I’m grateful to David C. Williams, the Inspector General of the USPS, and especially to Renee Sheehy and Mohammad Adra at the Office of Inspector General. Former postal executive Robert Cohen was an invaluable help in researching the institution’s modern history. Comments from former Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan and John Pickett and John Waller, also from the Office of Inspector General, were also most helpful.
I’m grateful to Steve Hutkins and his friends at the Save the Post Office website; Matthew Liebson, president of the Ohio Postal History Society; Frank Scheer, the energetic founder of the Railway Mail Service Library; and philatelist Richard C. Frajola. Historians Robert Allison and Nathaniel Sheidley introduced me to the colonial post in Boston, and Michael Schragg offered a personal tour of the U.S. Postal Museum, in Marshall, Michigan. Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris, who live in what might be a postal museum outside Albany, New York, shared their stories and scholarship as well as their treasures. The sponsors of PostalVision 2020 invited me to a conference, and the American Philatelic Society to an annual meeting, where Ken Martin directed me to my first collectible: a beautiful twenty-nine-cent Grace Kelly, the last of America’s engraved stamps.
Finally, I thank Kristine Dahl, my agent, Ann Godoff, my editor, and the team at Penguin Press, especially Will Heyward and Casey Rasch, and copy editor Candice Gianetti, who kept the long journey to this book running on steel wheels.
NOTES
1: INVENTING THE GOVERNMENT: B. FREE FRANKLIN
“was by the Endeavour made a better and a happier Man than I otherwise should have been”: Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, eds. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall (New York: Norton, 1986), p. 73.
“it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation”: Aristotle, in William D. Ross, The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (London: World Library Classics, 2009), p. 6.
“If man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles”: Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack: Selections from the Apothegms, and Proverbs, with a Brief Sketch of the Life of Benjamin Franklin (Waterloo, IA: The U.S.C. Publishing Co., 1914), p. 30.
“To-morrow, every fault is to be amended; but that to-morrow never comes”: Ibid., p. 56.
“The noblest question”: Ibid., p. 49.
“Well done is better than well said”: Ibid., p. 57.
“It would be a very strange Thing”: Benjamin Franklin to James Parker, 20 March 1751. http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0037.
“within the compass of a nut shell”: Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 3 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911), p. 540n.
The simple drawing showed: Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia). May 9, 1754, p. 2. http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume5/november06/primsource.cfm.
optical telegraph relayed coded messages: The optical telegraph (the word “telegraph” comes from the Greek for “writing at a distance”) that preceded the electrical version was first used in France in the nineteenth century. It also expedited shipping in Boston, New York City, and San Francisco, notably on Telegraph Hill.
“It is said that as many days”: Herodotus, The Histories, ed. and trans. A. D. Godley, vol. 4, book 8, verse 98 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924) ,pp. 96–97.
“perhaps the only mercantile project”: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. John Ramsay McCulloch (Edinburgh: A & C Black, 1863), p. 368.
“all letters which are brought from beyond the seas”: H. T. Peck, Selim H. Peabody, and Charles F. Richardson, eds., The International Cyclopaedia: A Compendium of Human Knowledge, vol. 12 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1892), p. 72.
“Your kinde lines I receaved”: John Endicott to John Winthrop, 1639. Katherine Grandjean, American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 47.
Few colonists could afford to use the Crown post: Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675−1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
“enter into a close correspondency”: John Romeyn Brodhead, History of the State of New York, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853). Quoted in William Smith, History of the Post Office in British North America (Cambrid
ge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1920), p. 197.
A witty journal kept by sharp-eyed “Madam” Sarah Kemble Knight: Sarah Kemble Knight, The Journal of Madam Knight (Boston: David R. Godine, 1972).
Knight’s journal wasn’t published for more than a century after her death, but her droll account would have delighted her contemporaries, who were increasingly interested in what their neighbors in other colonies were up to. An enthusiastic traveler, she relishes “neet and handsome” lodgings, steaming cups of “Chocolett,” and the customs of the natives, tribal and British alike.
Many Bostonians, Philadelphians, and New Yorkers would have chuckled over Knight’s report of customs in Connecticut, where the Indians “marry many wives and at pleasure put them away”—a free and easy approach to matrimony that also prevailed “among the English in this (Indulgent Colony) as their records plentifully prove.” They would have been amused by her account of a woman who told some visiting Quakers, who were “humming and singing and groneing after their conjuring way,” to “take my squalling Brat of a child here and sing to it . . . [for] I can’t get the Rogue to sleep.” Some would have been shocked to hear that Connecticut’s residents were “too indulgent (especially ye farmers) to their slaves . . . permitting them to sit at Table and eat with them, (as they say to save time,) and into the dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white hand.”
“a stout fellow, active and indefatigable”: Francis Lovelace to John Winthrop, 27 December 1672, in Brodhead, History of the State of New York, vol. 2, p. 6.
Some post riders exhibited a strong entrepreneurial streak, quitting the service to set up as independent express carriers or encouraging illegal tipping, hustling lottery tickets, or toting parcels on the side. A British postal inspector once discovered hearty seventy-two-year-old Ebenezer Herd, a Crown courier for forty-six years, preparing to deliver a pair of oxen to a customer along with the mail.
“very bad, Incumbered with Rocks”: Knight, Journal of Madam Knight, p. 17.
“what cabbage I swallowed”: Ibid., p. 5.
“got a Ladd and Cannoo”: Ibid.
“Clamor of some of the Town topers”: Ibid., p. 9.
“tyed by the Lipps to a pewter engine”: Ibid., p. 2.
“It being one chief project of that old deluder”: Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. 2 (Boston: William White, 1853), p. 203.
“or if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener”: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/power/text5/PublickOccurrences.pdf.
The authorities almost immediately shut down: Ibid.
“But being still a boy”: Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: McCarty & Davis, 1834), p. 8.
“facilitated the correspondence”: Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1923), p. 167.
“You must obey this now for a Law”: Captaine John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (London: I.D. and I.H. for Michael Sparks, 1624).
“Let all men have as much freedom”: John Smith, The Journals of Captain John Smith: A Jamestown Biography, ed. John Milliken Thompson (Des Moines, IA: National Geographic Books, 2007), p. 139.
“I am obnoxious to each carping tongue”: Anne Bradstreet, “The Prologue,” The Works of Anne Bradstreet, in Prose and Verse, ed. John Harvard Ellis (Charlestown, MA: Abram E. Cutter, 1867), p. 101.
so-called revenue stamps: The first display in the Smithsonian National Postal Museum’s “Gems of American Philately” section contains a proof of the revenue stamp mandated by the Crown’s 1765 Stamp Act. The colonists’ collective outrage over this form of taxation, which led to their first unified step on the long path to independence, helps to explain the hated item’s rarity.
“They will not find a rebellion”: Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 13, eds. Leonard W. Labaree, Helen C. Boatfield, and James H. Hutson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969), p. 142.
“an abridgment of what are called English liberties”: Quoted in James K. Hosmer, The Life of Thomas Hutchinson (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin 1896), appendix, p. 436.
“Were any Deputy Post Master to do his duty”: Hugh Finlay, Journal Kept by Hugh Finlay, Surveyor of the Post Roads on the Continent of North America, ed. Frank H. Norton (Brooklyn, NY: Norton, 1867), p. 32.
“letters are liable to be stopped”: William Goddard’s petition to the Continental Congress, September 29, 1774, in the collection of the National Postal Museum, Washington, D.C.
“His name was familiar to government and people”: John Adams, Diary and Autobiography, vol. 1, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961) p. 245.
“If you would not”: Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, p. 32.
2: BUILDING THE POSTAL COMMONS
“The disinclination of the individual States to yield”: George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, January 18, 1784, The George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799, Series 2: Letterbooks 1754–1799, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-benjamin-harrison/.
“Is there a doubt whether a common government”: George Washington, “Farewell Address,” September 17, 1796, ibid., and http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp.
“The importance of the post office and post roads”: George Washington to Congress, October 25, 1791, ibid., and http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washs03.asp.
“the only means of carrying heat and light”: Benjamin Rush, “Address to the People of the United States,” American Museum (January 1787), p. 8.
In 1790, the system: Statistics on post offices and routes from United States Postal Service, “Universal Service and the Postal Monopoly,” http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/universal-service-postal-monopoly-history.txt.
“the sole and exclusive right”: The Articles of Confederation; the Declaration of rights; the Constitution of the Commonwealth, and the Articles of the Definitive Treaty between Great-Britain and the United States of America (Richmond, VA: Dixon and Holt, 1784).
“establish Post Offices and post Roads”: Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7.
“a communications revolution that was as profound”: Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. vii.
“There is no resource so firm”: George Washington, “Fifth Annual Address,” 1793, in James Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1917, 53rd Congress, 2nd session, 1907, H. Misc. Doc. 210 (serial 3265), vol. 1, p. 142 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1896–99).
“His own mind was in a perpetual state of exaltation”: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science with Other Addresses and Essays (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1861), p. 26.
“principles, morals, and manners of our citizens”: Rush, “Address to the People of the United States,” ibid., p. 10.
“the true non-electric wire of government”: Benjamin Rush, “On the Defects of the Confederation,” in Dagobert D. Runes, ed., The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1947), p. 29.
“among the surest means of preventing the degeneracy”: James Madison, “Address of the House of Representatives to the President,” 1792, in Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., Papers of James Madison, Congressional Series, vol. 14, 6 April 1791–16 March 1793 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1983), p. 404.
“a better man than Rush”: Quoted in Carl Binger, M.D., Revolutionary Doctor: Benjamin Rush, 1746–1813 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), p. 296.
“as a man of Science”: Ibid.
“suffer any person, but such as you entrust”: Timothy Pickering, “Instructions to the Deputy Postmasters” (1792), in Richard R. John, ed., The American Postal Network, 1792−1914, 4 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), vol. 1, p. 4.
“so frequent and great an evil”: Quoted in Wayne E. Fuller, The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 241.
“I know of but one effectual Security”: Timothy Pickering to John Hargrove, August 8, 1794, National Archives Microfilm Publication 601, Letters Sent by the Postmaster General, 1789−1836, roll 3, 372−33. Quoted in Deanna Boyd and Kendra Chen, “The History and Experience of African Americans in America’s Postal Service,” http://postalmuseum.si.edu/AfricanAmericanhistory/p1.html.
the lively society of the Early Republic: For an excellent survey of this era, see Daniel Walker Howe’s Pulitzer prize–winning What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
“more dangerous than standing armies”: Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816, in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 10 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892−99), p. 31.
“metaphysical abstractions”: Quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture (New York: Norton, 2002), pp. 202, 206.
“Our fellow citizens in the remote parts of the Union”: Archives of the United States Post Office Department, Letterbooks of the Postmaster General, Book C, 1793, p. 54. American Historical Association, Annual Report of the American Historical Association (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1911), p. 144.
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