Winifred Gallagher

Because Benjamin Rush and James Madison, I mean, these guys were political philosophers.

They weren't just like some guys.

They were very impressive intellectuals in their own right.

They realized that a democracy, if it's going to work, it requires knowledgeable voters.

So they decided that they would use their new postal network to create an informed electorate.

And this is really crucial.

they devised this kind of Robin Hood scheme that used the very costly postage for letter mail.

Then most people didn't even get one letter a year.

They were mostly sent by businessmen and lawyers.

So they soaked these businessmen on their letter mail and that money subsidized mailing cheap, uncensored newspapers to every citizen.

This was considered, uh,

wildly radical in Europe.

In Europe, the governing powers didn't want the people to know what was going on.

So this really very enlightened postal policy is the thing that really sparked America's very lively, disputatious political culture, which we see every day, and also made us the global communications and information superpower of the world with amazing speed.

Well, the Post's mandate to deliver the news throughout a very rapidly expanding country, it was already moving west over the Appalachians, that very quickly organized the country's physical and social landscape around post offices that were connected by post roads.

In order to get the newspapers to the people, the department had to jumpstart a transportation industry.

There was no way to get from point A to point B until the post office started paying, initially, horseback riders and stagecoaches to deliver the mail as quickly as possible.

So by the time de Tocqueville came to America in 1831...

The system already had, our mail system already had twice as many post offices as Great Britain and five times more than his own France.

He was astonished at how quickly it developed.