Part 14

1829. George Wolf 78,219 Joseph Ritner 51,776 Whole number —————— 129,995

1832. George Wolf 91,235 Joseph Ritner 88,186 Whole number —————— 179,421

1835. Joseph Ritner 94,023 George Wolf 65,804 H. A. Muhlenberg 40,586 Whole number —————— 200,413

1838. David R. Porter 131,496 Joseph Ritner 121,389 Whole number ——————— 252,885

1841. David R. Porter 136,335 John Banks 113,374 Whole number ——————— 249,709

1844. Francis R. Shunk 160,403 Joseph Markle 156,114 Whole number ——————— 316,517

1847. Francis R. Shunk 146,081 James Irvin 128,148 Emanuel C. Reigert 11,247 Whole number ——————— 285,476

1848. W. F. Johnston 168,462 Morris Longstreth 168,192 Whole number ——————— 336,654

1851. William Bigler 186,507 W. F. Johnston 178,070 Whole number ——————— 364,577

1854. James Pollock 204,008 William Bigler 167,001 Whole number ——————— 371,009

1857. William F. Packer 188,890 David Wilmot 146,147 Isaac Hazlehurst 28,100 Whole number ——————— 363,137

1860. Andrew G. Curtin 262,403 Henry D. Foster 230,239 Whole number ——————— 492,642

1863. Andrew G. Curtin 269,496 G. W. Woodward 254,171 Whole number ——————— 523,667

XI.

Postmasters.

Having brought the postal history of the colonies up to the time Richard Bache succeeded Benjamin Franklin (November, 1776), and whose dismissal gave the latter some grounds of complaint, if not censure, against the appointment of Ebenezer Hazard, who had the office under President Washington, we will carry out the object of these tables, by continuing the list of postmaster-generals from that period.

SAMUEL OSGOOD.—This gentleman was born at Andover, Massachusetts, February 14, 1748; graduated at Harvard College in 1770; a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, and also of the board of war, and subsequently an aid to General Ward; in 1779, a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention; in 1781, appointed a member of Congress; in 1785, first commissioner of the treasury; and September 26, 1789, postmaster-general. He was afterwards naval officer of the port of New York, and died in that city, August 12, 1813.

Early in the first session of the Second Congress two important subjects of a national character received the attention of the representatives of the people: one was establishing a national mint, and the other the organization of the postal system.

The establishing of a mint, however, was delayed, and no special action was taken in that direction until 1790, when Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, urged the matter upon the attention of Congress. In 1792, April 2, laws were enacted for the establishment of a mint. It did not, however, go into full operation until 1795.

The first mint was located in Philadelphia, and remained the sole issuer of coin in the United States until 1835, when a branch was established in each of the States of Georgia, North Carolina, and Louisiana,—in Charlotte, Dahlonega, and New Orleans. These three branches went into operation in the years 1837-38.

A bill for the organization of a post-office system was passed in 1792, simultaneously with that for establishing the mint.

Very soon after the commencement of the first session of Congress a letter was received from Ebenezer Hazard (July 17, 1789), then postmaster-general under the old Confederation, suggesting the importance of some new regulations for that department. A bill for the temporary establishing of a post-office was passed soon afterwards. The subject was brought up from time to time, until the present system was organized in 1792. The postmaster-general was not made a Cabinet-officer until the first year (1829) of President Jackson’s administration.

TIMOTHY PICKERING.—Born at Salem, Massachusetts, July 17, 1746; graduated in 1763; was colonel of a regiment of militia at the age of nineteen, and marched for the seat of war at the first news of the battle of Lexington; in 1775, was appointed judge of two local courts; in the fall of 1776, marched to New Jersey with his regiment; in 1777, appointed adjutant-general, and subsequently a member of the board of war with Gates and Mifflin; in 1780 he succeeded Greene as quartermaster-general; in 1790 he was employed in negotiations with the Indians; August 12, 1791, he was appointed postmaster-general; in 1794, Secretary of War, and in 1795, Secretary of State; from 1803 to 1811 he was senator, and from 1814 to 1817 representative in Congress; died at Salem, June 29, 1829.

JOSEPH HABERSHAM.—Born in 1750; a lieutenant-colonel during the Revolutionary War, and in 1785 a member of Congress; appointed postmaster-general, February 25, 1795; he was afterwards president of the United States Branch Bank in Savannah, Georgia; died at that place, November, 1815.

GIDEON GRANGER.—Born at Suffield, Connecticut, July 19, 1767; graduated at Yale College in 1787, and the following year admitted to the bar; in 1793, elected to the Connecticut Legislature; November 28, 1801, appointed postmaster-general; retired in 1814, and removed to Canandaigua, New York; April, 1819, elected a member of the Senate of that State, but resigned in 1821 on account of ill health. During his service in that body he donated one thousand acres of land to aid the construction of the Erie Canal. Died at Canandaigua, December 31, 1822.

RETURN JONATHAN MEIGS.—Born at Middletown, Connecticut, in 1765; graduated at Yale College in 1785, and subsequently admitted to the bar; in 1788, emigrated to Marietta, Ohio, then the Northwestern Territory; in 1790, during the Indian wars, he was sent by Governor St. Clair on a perilous mission through the wilderness to the British commandant at Detroit; in the winter of 1802-03 he was elected by the legislature the first chief justice of the Supreme Court of the new State; in October, 1804, he was appointed colonel commanding the United States forces in the upper district of the Territory of Louisiana, and resigned his judgeship; in the following year he was appointed one of the United States judges for Louisiana; April 2, 1807, he was transferred to the Territory of Michigan; in October following he resigned his judgeship, and was elected Governor of the State of Ohio, but his election was successfully contested on the ground of non-residence. He was chosen at the same session as one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the State, and at the next session as United States Senator for a vacancy of one year, and also for a full term. In 1810 he was again elected Governor of Ohio, and on the 8th of December resigned his seat in the Senate; in 1812 he was re-elected Governor; on the 17th of March, 1814, he was appointed postmaster-general, which he resigned in June, 1823. Died at Marietta, March 29, 1825.

JOHN MCLEAN.—Born in Morris county, New Jersey, March 11, 1785. His father subsequently removed to Ohio, of which State the son continued a resident. He labored on the farm until sixteen years of age, when he applied himself to study, and two years afterwards removed to Cincinnati, and supported himself by copying in the county clerk’s office while he studied law. In 1807 he was admitted to the bar; in 1812 he was elected to Congress, and re-elected in 1814; in 1816 he was unanimously elected by the legislature a judge of the Supreme Court of that State; in 1822 he was appointed by President Monroe commissioner of the General Land-Office, and on the 26th of June, 1823, postmaster-general; in 1829 he was appointed as one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

WILLIAM T. BARRY.—Born in Fairfax county, Virginia, March 18, 1780; graduated at the College of William and Mary. He was admitted to the bar, and in early life emigrated to Kentucky. In 1828 he was a candidate for Governor of that State, and defeated by a small majority after one of the most memorable contests in its annals; appointed postmaster-general March 9, 1829; in 1835, appointed minister plenipotentiary to Spain, and died at Liverpool, England, on his way to Madrid.

Mr. Barry was the first postmaster-general who had the honor of being one of the Cabinet. Whether such a movement has benefited the postal department or not can only be ascertained by a reference to its records. As these present more the appearance of political names, figures, changes, removals, and a confusion of all the elements which make up a party, it is doubtful if the public mind is prepared to view the postal department in any other light than that of one of the revolving political luminaries of the country. A reference, however, to some statistics furnished in this work, and an occasional reference to its not being a self-sustaining institution, may probably throw some light upon the subject.

We have avoided, through motives of nationality rather than of choice, any direct allusion to frauds in the postal department. “When Judge McLean left the department it was,” said his friends, “in a thriving condition.” Such was not the case. From “The Aurora,” edited by the late William Duane, bearing date January 10, 1835, we take the following statement:—

“It would be a hopeless task to seek the _qualities_, _actions_, _evidence of fitness_, or _principles_ of Mr. McLean. We know he was a member of Congress: can any one _discover_ any thing which he did there? He was appointed postmaster-general to cover the _retreat_ of R. J. Meigs, who should have been removed three years before.

“And what did he do in the general post-office? Why, the men who had practised the most enormous abuses, which had been proved by _blanching evidence_ before Congress, he retained in the prosecution of their _former business_.

“The reproach is no doubt to be shared with Congress, which, on the occasion of the investigation of the sale of post-office drafts, suffered the inquiry to be stifled after attempts had been made, without success, on some poor men to suppress the truth, and who were discharged for their fidelity, whilst others were retained whose memories, like the memorable Italian delator, was _non mi ricordo_!

“Mr. McLean entered the general post-office when it was whelmed in abuses and in debt. Accounts in that office had not been brought up, or cash accounts balanced, for several years; and, in fact, no true _account_ of the affairs of the post-office department at that period had ever appeared.

“Mr. McLean was a mere walking-stick for the _directors_ of his predecessor. He made some efforts to bring up the business, and some laws were passed to oblige accountability; but he left the general post-office as he found it, deep in debt,—saddling his successor with the burden, and leaving the system in such disorder as to render it necessary for Mr. Barry to organize the department wholly anew, were it only to extricate it from the hands of those men who had thrown it all into confusion.”[38]

Mr. Barry, in his address to the people, speaking of the department as it came from the hands of Mr. McLean to him, says,—

“The late postmaster-general, in his report dated November 17, 1828, shows that, instead of saving $500,000, the expenses of his department from the 1st of July, 1827, to the 1st of July, 1828, were upwards of $25,000 more than all its revenues for the same period, and that he had entered into contracts to take effect from the 1st of January, 1829, which involved the department in an expense, for the period of only six months from the 1st of January to the 1st of July, 1829, of $40,778.55 more than all its revenue for the same time; and that the expenses of the department for the year commencing the 1st of July, 1828, were $74,714.15 more than its revenues, and that the excess of expenditure, together with the losses sustained, had diminished the finances of the department within one year to the amount of $101,266.03. In this state of things I had no agency. It was produced before I came into office.”

AMOS KENDALL.—Born at Dunstable, Massachusetts, August 16, 1789; graduated at Dartmouth College in 1811; about the year 1812, removed to Kentucky, and in 1815 was appointed postmaster at Georgetown in that State; in 1816 he assumed the editorial charge of the “Argus,” published at Frankfort, in the same State, which he continued until 1829, being most of the time State printer; in 1829 he was appointed fourth auditor of the United States Treasury; and May 1, 1835, postmaster-general. He resigned the latter office in 1840, and has, since the introduction of the electric telegraph, been mainly employed in connection with enterprises for its operation. He is yet living.

A GLANCE OVER HIS POSTAL OPERATIONS.

The years 1834, ’35, and ’36 were remarkable for an almost epidemic species of madness on the subject of slavery, or, rather, upon the question of the immediate emancipation of the slaves throughout the South. That this was carried to extremes by both parties there can be no doubt, and that very extremity became the chief cause of the rebellion of the South. The question has been settled by the North that although the South had all she could claim consistently under an _uncertain clause_ of the Constitution, she had no right to make slavery a fiendish monster, that was to ride iron-shod over all the Free States in the Union, and silence the voice of Christianity in its peaceful attempts to lessen its evils. As a relic of the long past, one of the dark pages from Saxon history, the institution of slavery, as sustained in the South, was a deep, damning, dark spot on a land that boasted of principles based on three cardinal precepts, “virtue, liberty, and independence,”—a misnomer in its Constitution and laws.

While the fanatical portion of the Northern abolitionists were striving to impress upon the South the enormity of their crime in sustaining slavery, the South was equally virulent in its condemnation of their mode of doing so. Meetings were held all over the country, speeches made, and passion swayed the judgment to the total extinction of common sense. The South accused the North of encouraging amalgamation; the North indignantly denied it, and with much logic proved that it was a _Southern virtue altogether_.

This was the beginning of the rebellion: here were the seeds grown, watered, and nurtured by hatred, envy, and malice. The South had planted its poisonous root on a free soil, and it came in contact with its more wholesome brother: the one began to pale before the venom of the other, blasting it like “a mildew’d ear.” It is not our purpose to give a history of these eventful years, nor the consequence attending the operations of the Northern opposition party to slavery against Southern arrogance and presumptuous domination. The question, however, had to be decided at one time or another; and in 1860 it was answered by the thunder sound of cannon and flashes from millions of rifles.

The South became very indignant against the post-office department, which it accused of an abuse of power, by _permitting_ what they called “incendiary publications” to pass through the office to individuals in the South. The Federal Government was called upon to correct this “prostitution of its laws,” which was calculated to affect its (the South’s) peculiar “domestic institution,” and if persisted in would be the CERTAIN DESTRUCTION OF THE UNION.

In answer to repeated complaints made to Amos Kendall, Esq., the then postmaster-general, both from Southern men and Northern advocates of slavery, he stated distinctly that he had no legal authority to exclude newspapers from the mail, nor prohibit their carriage or delivery on account of their character and tendency, real or supposed. Indeed, this would be assuming a power over the liberty of the press which might be perverted and abused to an extent highly injurious to our republican system of government.

In 1835, Amos Kendall received a letter from the postmaster at Charleston, stating that he had detained in the office certain inflammatory newspapers, circulars, pamphlets, &c., the distribution of which he thought was calculated to do much harm in the State; in fact, a meeting was called in that city of its citizens upon the subject of these “incendiary documents,” when it was publicly stated that “_arrangements had been made with the postmaster, by which no seditious pamphlets shall be issued or forwarded from the post-office in this city_”! The committee consisted of the following-named gentlemen, who had waited upon the postmaster, and hence his letter to the postmaster-general:—General Hayne, John Robinson, Charles Edmonston, H. A. Desaussure, James Robertson, James Lynah, Edward R. Laurens. The following is an extract from Mr. Kendall’s letter to the postmaster at Charleston: similar replies to other postmasters from the Southern States were also forwarded, as it appeared to have been a preconcerted Southern action. Of this there can be no doubt; for the Charleston letter bore date July 29, 1835, the Richmond August 8, New Orleans July 15, and Georgia July 10. Mr. Kendall says,—

“But I am not prepared to direct you to forward or deliver the papers of which you speak. The post-office department was created to serve the people of each and all of the _United States_, and not to be used as the instrument of their _destruction_. None of the papers detained have been forwarded to me, and I cannot judge for myself of their character and tendency; but you inform me that they are in character ‘the most inflammable and incendiary, and insurrectionary in the highest degree.’

“By no act or direction of mine, official or private, could I be induced to aid knowingly in giving circulation to papers of this description, directly or indirectly. We owe an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the communities in which we live; and if the _former_ be perverted to destroy the _latter_, it is patriotism to disregard them. Entertaining these views, I cannot sanction, and will not condemn, the step you have taken. Your justification must be looked for in the character of the papers detained, and the circumstances by which you are surrounded.”

“The surroundings” in and near all Southern post-offices are those which the institution of slavery inaugurates. Letters from certain Eastern States were subject to an espionage somewhat similar to that by which a detective policeman tracks an unsuspecting culprit from haunt to haunt, acquiring a perfect knowledge of his habits and the character of his associates. Letters were opened by a sort of steaming process, read and their contents noted, carefully sealed again, and delivered to the person to whom they were directed. If the contents of the letter came under the denunciatory head, the individual to whom it was addressed received intimation from the Order of “The Regulators,” a society formed for the purpose of finding out abolitionists, to leave the city in twenty-four hours.

The writer of this resided in the city of New Orleans at that period, and he knew of the existence of one established as far back as 1829: it was called the “Regulators.” It was not only formidable in numbers, but equally so in a political point of view. This order has since been merged in that of the “Golden Circle.” One of the obligations of the “Regulators” was, and is in the new “junto,” to this effect:—

“I do promise that I will use my best exertions to find out any and every one who in any way favors abolitionism, and who attempts to instruct or enlighten a slave, either by teaching him his letters, or by giving him religious instruction,” &c.

Under this oath men were driven from the South, and in some instances _tarred and feathered_! In 1834 the writer knew an old gentleman from Boston, who, ignorant of the _exclusive_ slave-laws of the State, was compelled to quit New Orleans for simply talking to an old black man about religion and teaching him his letters, so that he might read the word of God: this, too, in a Christian land,—a land of freedom![39]

It may be observed, however, in extenuation even for such seeming high-handed measures, that as slavery was an acknowledged institution rearing itself up on the Constitution, and that some 4,000,000 of human creatures were chained to it, it was absolutely necessary to keep them in ignorance of any sympathy existing for their degraded state either in the North or the South, lest such sympathy should excite them to resistance. Hence every thing that was calculated to throw light on their benighted pathway, and strengthen any lingering preconceived idea that they were men and not beasts of burden, was kept studiously away from them. As long as this country sanctioned the existence of slavery, just so long was she justified in protecting those States sustaining it from any outbreak on the part of its victims. It was an evil that came in under the Constitution, and it was an evil it was bound to sustain. The anti-slavery party North carried their views far beyond common sense and simple reason; and this led to Southern opposition. But the more enlightened people viewed both parties as acting wrong, and in opposing the first they as strongly repudiated the acts of the latter. And what has been the consequence? The South, alone in its crime, alone in its inhuman traffic, alone in its crushing power to make men beasts of burden,—even lower in the animal scale than the animal itself,—like Lucifer, rebelled against its country and its God. Thus, slaveholders became barbarians by the very act of attempting to rivet the chains of bondage on man and his country. That rebellion recreated in our midst a new order, or rather carried out the very spirit of the Declaration of Independence, declaring that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.” There can be no such thing as freedom, if its meaning be linked to the chains of slavery. There is no true freedom for an American to boast of, if one portion of the land sustains slavery and laughs at the sound of the lash as it lacerates the back of a bondsman in the nineteenth century. Age of Christianity! age of refinement! age of letters! What a misnomer!

This feeling, which had a tendency to divide the South from the North, was gradually assuming a dangerous aspect. It was a feeling antagonistical to that which prevailed in the North. The one was allied to the age of barbarism, the other to the highest order of civilization. The worst passions of bad men were working the evil; they engendered hatred and malice; and the rising popularity of the North for its intelligence, its institutions, its educational system, its arts, its sciences, and, in fact, all that a high state of intellectual knowledge produces, added fuel to the hellish fire that was burning in the Southern breast.

They could boast of only one institution, and that was slavery. This institution sent forth

“the piercing cry Which shook the waves and rent the sky: E’en now, e’en now, on yonder western shores Weeps pale Despair, and writhing Anguish roars; E’en now on Afric’s groves, with hideous yell Fierce Slavery stalks, and slips the dogs of hell; From vale to vale the gathering cries rebound, And sable nations tremble at the sound!”

The South actually could boast of but this one institution: for all others, either of commerce, agriculture, education, arts or sciences, they were indebted to the North. And yet they rebelled!