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NOTE 11. The New Postal System

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Volume 4, Chapter 11, The New Postal System

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If the colonies were to fight a war of any length or seriousness against Great Britain,

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they could obviously no longer rely upon the Crown's monopoly postal service for transmission

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of their mail. When the final crisis began at the beginning of 1774 and Britain got word

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of the Boston Tea Party, Benjamin Franklin, already in hot water, was swiftly removed

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as the royally appointed Deputy Postmaster General for America. Franklin's unceremonious

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removal reminded the Americans that the postal authorities were empowered to open letters

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and block delivery of what they thought of as objectionable matter. In addition to the

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According to the threat of the Royal Post to the freedom of the press, they began to

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see that postal fees were equivalent to another tax levied on them without their consent.

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Extension of the American boycott from British trade to the Royal Post was thought of first,

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but it was soon seen that a boycott of a tight monopoly could only be self-defeating, for

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then no mail would be carried.

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The solution was set forth by the eminent radical printer William Goddard, publisher

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of the Maryland Journal and the Pennsylvania Chronicle. In early February 1774, he proposed

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an illegal, revolutionary, constitutional post, organized and financed by local private

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sources operating at cost. The post would be built from the ground up, with local officers

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In the spring of 1775, the illegal, privately organized and financed, constitutional post

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had a chain of successful post offices from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Williamsburg,

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Virginia, and the languishing Royal Post in New York and Boston was being forced to

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discharge post writers for lack of work. When the Revolutionary War began, the New England

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and New York Provincial Congresses removed the onus of illegality from the new postal

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System.

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But the Continental Congress took a little noted step from liberty back to centralized

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statism in this vital area.

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In doing this, Congress had been prodded by a committee headed by Franklin, who, since

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his disgrace in England, had been forced to throw in his lot with the American cause.

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A voluntary, efficient grassroots postal service had aided the revolution and replaced the

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and the Royal Post. But at the end of July, Congress decided to nationalize the Constitutional

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Post. It was also decided to expand the postal system southward to Savannah, Georgia, and

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northward to Falmouth, Maine. Not fortuitously, Goddard, an ardent rebel and founder of the

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The Constitutional Post was deposed and shunted aside in favor of the old opportunist Franklin,

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who was chosen to be postmaster general of the New American Post, operated by a newly

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created postal department. A colonies-wide governmental post, all too reminiscent of the

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old centralized royal post, had now replaced the grassroots private postal system. In any

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The event, under pressure of the growing American competition and its own increasing unpopularity,

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and further handicapped by being prohibited by the Maryland Provincial Convention, the

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The Royal Post closed its American doors in December 1775, never to return.