SOME ASPECTS OF POSTAL EXTENSION INTO THE WEST.

By JULIAN P. BRETZ.

It is not easy to overemphasize the difliculty of transmitting news and information throughout the United States in the years immediately following the adoption of the Constitution. The necessity of providing means of communication in the older districts, east of the Allegheny Mountains, for purposes of business and social convenience, was but one phase of the problem. Thousands had migrated to the interior, far from the customary route of trade and travel through the seaboard cities, and to bring these interior districts into communication with the older areas of settlement was a political as well as a social and economic necessity. This was especially true of the region west of the mountains, where the people were thought to be wavering in their loyalty to the new Government. It was understood that without public and regular means of conveyance newspapers could not penetrate that distant region nor could a local press develop there. Without this aid in bringing about a better understanding of the purposes of the National Government it was feared that the people of the WVest would be influenced by intriguers and demagogues and that tendencies toward separation might be increased rather than diminished.1

It is the purpose of this paper to point out the political services of the posts in the early years of the constitutional period with special reference to the assistance rendered in the circulation of newspapers and in the development of a local press in the western States and‘ Territories.

Prior to the Revolution the post roads were limited in extent and importance. The post oflice was regarded as a source of revenue to the Crown, and in accordance with this theory pos't roads had been established only where they were profitable.2 At the close of the colonial period, therefore, they extended from Maine to Georgia, connecting the principal commercial centers on the Atlantic sea

board.1 Little had been done toward establishing cross posts to the interior, and until 1788 no cross post was extended beyond the mountains for the accommodation of the settlers in the western country.g

With the inauguration of the new Government, in 1789, the post oflice almost immediately assumed a larger importance. It was understood that the success of the Union would depend in some measure upon the spread of information throughout the land. An interest in the new Government was to be created and maintained, and to this end there was a desire to encourage newspapers and to facilitate correspondence in every direction. The situation is well described by Postmaster General Pickering in his observations on the post oflice, in 1793, when he states:

Our fellow citizens in the remote parts of the Union seem entitled to some indulgence. Their great distances from the seats of government and principal commercial towns subject them to peculiar difficuities in their correspondence. They have also few or no printing presses among them. Hence without the aid of public post roads they will not only be embarrassed in their correspondence, but remain destitute of every necessary information.3

The National Government entered immediately upon the solution of this problem with the only means at hand, the post oflice. The day of turnpikes, stages, canals, and railways had not yet come,‘ but an effort was made at once to establish regular lines of postal communication with the West, and thus to do whatever was. possible to awaken an interest in the affairs of the Nation. \Vashington had realized, at a much earlier time, the advantages of communication between the seaboard States and the interior,5 and in his first annual address, January 8, 1790, he urged the expediency of “facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our country by a due attention to the post Oflice and post roads.6 In his opening address to the first session of the Second Congress, October 25, 17 91, he again referred to the posts, pointing out “their instrumentality in diffusing a knowledge of the’ laws and proceedings of the Government” and urging the establishment of additional cross posts, “especially to some of the important points in the western and northern parts of the Union.” 7

The opinion of \Vashington as to the political usefulness of the posts was shared by the early Postmasters General. Samuel Osgood, the first incumbent under the Constitution, favored a reduction in the