How the Post Office Changed America

The United States Postal Service: though known for being quite slow compared to private companies, it is one of the most integral parts to the U.S. as a whole. It played a huge part into making America America, and without it, the U.S. would not have been the large, coherent country it is today.

Back when the United States was still a collection of 13 British Colonies, infrastructure was poor. Few roads connected colonies together, and it was very difficult to travel outside of the general area you resided in. In fact, it was considered a marvelous achievement when you could travel between New York and Boston (a distance of 215 miles and which takes 3.5 hours by car today) in under a week! The fact that the colonists felt so detached to the British Crown can be attributed to the fact that the infrastructure connecting the two areas was so bad. And there was barely any link among the colonies themselves. Most people at the time identified themselves with their state more than their country.

The Founding Fathers realized that a centralized postal service would be integral in order to stage an interstate revolution against the British Empire. Because of this, the Second Continental Congress actually created the Post Office in 1775, one year before the United States was even a country. The Post Office Department was officially created in 1792.

Because the United States expanded westward in territory so quickly in the century after its founding, there was actually more land than there were people to settle it. California was the only state on the West Coast, and even with the gold rush, its population only got to 1 million by about 1890. Between California and the East Coast was virtually nothing but untamed wilderness with no roads to speak of. The fastest way to deliver information to California was on a boat trip down to Panama, a short trip across land, then onto another boat toward San Francisco. For all practical purposes, California was an island. Because of this, it was very difficult for people and goods to reach the West Coast, making it hard to populate the western regions of the country.

At the time, the only way to have information delivered to you and to communicate long-distance was via the postal service. As a result, all towns needed to have a post office in order to actually call itself a “town.” The post office also served as an outpost of the federal government in even the smallest rural communities. This helped to tie the nation together as a whole and made people feel more connected with the federal government.

bIn addition, newspapers were delivered to communities free of charge. This allowed people in even the most remote communities to access information as easily as a person living in a large city. This allowed people to be knowledgable about current events and politics, further increasing people’s ties to the government.

And because, as mentioned above, the road infrastructure was horrible in many parts of the country, the Post Office was a major pioneer in linking up American towns via road. Early in its history, the Post Office created long dirt roads linking up a large part of the country. These roads eventually morphed into interstate highways.

Arguably, the Post Office helped create the first transcontinental railroad. Before it was created, the railroad ended in St. Louis, Missouri. In order to get the mail beyond the frontier, it was a long and painful process to transport the mail via stagecoach. One such postal service that was created before the transcontinental railroad was completed was the Pony Express, which delivered mail from New York to San Francisco in ten days, a major accomplishment. It cost a lot, but it was well worth the time it saved. This was accomplished by having riders deliver the package 24 hours a day. This service also helped deliver the news of the 1860 Election to California in just 7 days to bridge the gap between the east and west telegraph lines. The transcontinental telegraph was complete by 1861 and the railroad by 1869.

Post Office contracts also helped many unprofitable railroad lines stay in business in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Post Office would make use of train cars to sort mail en-route to its destination, helping prop up even the most unprofitable routes. Before the car was popularized, railroad was often the best way to move around the country, and Post Office contracts allowed many people to be connected to the rail system.

The Post Office also helped popularize air transportation. Similarly to the railroad, Post Office contracts helped to prop up unprofitable air routes, making air transportation accessible to many more people. In fact, most of America’s biggest air carriers started life off as a Post Office airmail contractor.

Because of the connectivity the Post Office provided, Americans are one of the world’s most patriotic citizens, despite the country’s large size. In fact, it is the only major large country not to have experienced a modern separatist movement.

We can thank the Post Office for helping, to a large extent, in building America’s great air, road, and (cargo) rail networks of the modern day. Given its crucialness in U.S. history and the nation’s founding, the Postal Service should be kept at all costs. Even today, it is the cheapest way to deliver mail. For just 55 cents, a letter can be delivered coast-to-coast in less than a week, something that FedEx, DHL, or UPS could charge tens of dollars for. The Postal Service is an inaugural part the the United States as a nation.

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Note: On 7/24/20, we changed our source for COVID-19 data to use official data from the COVID Tracking Project and Johns Hopkins University. This resulted in an approximate -100,000 total case change and a -3,000 death change, as the data from the aforementioned sources, though more accurate, are updated less frequently than the previous source. This also resulted in our data differing from the data provided by the coronavirus tracker widget below. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.