Wendover Productions - How the Post Office Made America

Short Summary

Main recommendation: The video argues the United States Post Office, founded in 1775 before the nation itself, is the key reason the country came together, because it linked people to the federal government and spread information across a vast frontier. Its subsidies and routes also physically connected towns through roads, railroads, and airmail. The video's claim that the Post Office "made America" is the central thesis.

Key Points

• Before the Post Office, Americans identified with their state first and the nation second; the phrase was "the United States are," not "is."
• Postal service was poor and politically important for coordination among colonies, so the Continental Congress founded the Post Office almost a full year before the United States itself.
• Newspapers shipped nearly free, letting someone in new Houston, Texas read national news as easily as someone in Washington, DC.
• Post roads developed into America's first interstate roads, so informational links led to physical links.
• Postal subsidies paid railroads and airlines to serve small towns that would otherwise have been unprofitable, a pattern repeated with airmail in the 1920s.

Details Worth Noting

• Pony Express: Riders reached up to 25 miles per hour, switched horses about every 10 miles, and changed riders every 75 miles; one half-ounce letter cost the equivalent of $130, and it could cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 10 days.
• Lincoln's 1860 election news reached West Coast papers only seven days and 17 hours after East Coast papers, versus 17 days for news to cross the continent two years earlier.
• A mobile post office on wheels began operating in 1862, sorting mail while traveling west by train.
• Airmail routes between DC and New York began just months after World War One, and many airlines that merged into United, Delta, and American were founded as airmail operators.

Bottom Line

The Post Office did more than deliver letters; by tying distant towns to the federal government and to each other, it helped turn separate states into a single national identity.