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Postal Service's Legacy as a Beacon for Our Country

Postal Service’s Legacy as a Beacon for Our Country
By Bob Levi
NAPS Director of Legislative & Political Affairs

Our country, once again, is being rocked by a contentious election campaign, during which the standard-bearers of the two major political parties are presenting two diametrically opposed and potentially incompatible visions of our nation’s future. Rather than focus on the volatile next few months or years as we celebrate America’s 248th birthday, I want to explore our instructive United States history—particularly as influenced by America’s “Postal Patriots.”

Indeed, we continue to learn the lessons from our forebearers. Their experiences, challenges, successes—and, yes, even failures—ought to guide our contemporary national leaders as they must strive to “bind the nation together.”

In the past, through the medium of NAPS Chat, the NAPS podcast, we have explored our heralded first Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin and third Postmaster General Ebenezer Hazard, who was the last postmaster general appointed by Congress. Of course, I was guided by noted colonial-era U.S. history experts. Both revolutionary-era personalities played a pivotal role in establishing our nation and national postal system, developing a mail network and defining the national postal mission for posterity.

This year, with the assistance of retired Dickinson College Historian John Osborne, Library of Congress Librarian Christine Bombaro and my old friend, newly appointed USPS Postal Historian Steve Kochersperger, I chose to learn more about America’s 26th Postmaster General John A.J. Creswell. You might ask, “Why John Creswell?”

To be quite honest, my interest in Creswell was very much incidental to my reading Ron Chernow’s award-winning biography of President Ulysses S. Grant. It is important to be reminded that before the Postal Reorganization Act of 1971, the postmaster general was a cabinet-level post, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Thus, the PMG tended to reflect the political views and national priorities of the elected president.

Grant was elected during the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction, a time of immense regional turmoil. He sought to reunite and energize a nation. Grant knew Creswell was no political novice. He came from a border state and was strongly pro-union and anti-slave.

Creswell served in the Maryland State Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives and, for a short time, in the U.S. Senate. Grant also knew Creswell was the right nominee for the time.

At the outset of his tenure as postmaster general, Creswell was confronted with two major postal challenges: a cavernous financial deficit and poor mail service. (Sound familiar?) He desired to reduce postal costs, while also improving service.

Creswell enhanced the speed and capacity of mail transport through the expanded use of railroads and steamships. American citizens and business embraced the initiative. As a result, mail volume increased and unit costs for conveying mail declined. However, as the years went by, Creswell decided that improved mail service was more important than continuing to drive down costs.

The railroad barons demanded increased fees to carry mail; there were scarce alternatives. One of the more politically fraught actions taken by Creswell was a major reform of the “franking privilege,” a right by which almost 32,000 Americans were able to send mail without cost. This franking reform resulted in the purchase of more stamps, totaling about $1.6 million.

The current “congressional frank,” where a member of Congress’ signature is printed on the upper-right corner of an envelope, in lieu of a stamp, is a vestige of the 19th century postal frank. Creswell also introduced to America the “postcard” and modernized stamp production to improve stamp adhesion to envelopes and deter stamp counterfeiting.

Nevertheless, the item that most drew me to Creswell was his approach to public service and integration. Unlike his predecessors and immediate successors, Creswell appointed former slaves and sharecroppers to positions as postmasters, particularly in former Confederate states. This is important because in the 1870s, more than 70% of the Post Office Department’s 20,000 workers were postmasters.

One specific postmaster caught my attention—Anna M. Dumas. In November 1872, Creswell appointed Dumas the America’s first African American female postmaster. She served in the deep South in Covington, LA. I happen to know a retired postmaster of Covington: Signature Federal Credit Union Board Member Dale Goff.

As postscript to the Dumas appointment, in 1888, the first African American postmaster’s estate was sued for receiving excessive compensation as postmaster of Covington by then Postmaster General William F. Vilas who served under President Grover Cleveland. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where, in 1893, the high court ruled against Vilas.

Moreover, in 1869, only two months after his appointment as postmaster general, Creswell hired the first African American letter carrier—James Christian of Richmond, VA. And, later that year, Creswell hired as a letter carrier America’s first African American Medal of Honor recipient, William Carney, who served over three decades as a letter carrier.

As part of the postal family, we all should be proud that America’s postal system has been a beacon for our democracy and should be so even now.