IT CAN HAPPEN HERE
Before there was a United States of America, there was a postal system. Revolutionaries like Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson hatched their plans using underground postal networks known as committees of correspondence. In 1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress created the Post Office Department and named Benjamin Franklin the first postmaster general.
American democracy expanded with the postal system, one of the only institutions that bound the new nation together and aimed to serve the many rather than the few. The Post Office Act of 1792, signed by George Washington, heavily subsidized the mailing of newspapers, laying the groundwork for an informed citizenry. It also made it a crime for the government to interfere with the mail. When the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he marveled at the young country’s postal system—it had twice as many post offices
You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.
Start your free 30 days