In 1800, postal officials began using selected post offices as distribution centers. 1808 Overview When we reflect that the objects effected by the transportation of the mail are among the choicest comforts and enjoyments of social life, it is pleasing to observe that the dissemination of them to every corner of our country has outstripped[…]
The Postal Service Act, signed by President George Washington on February 20, 1792, established the Post Office Department. Introduction The United States Post Office Department (USPOD; also known as the Post Office or U.S. Mail) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department, officially from 1872 to[…]
Lincoln was that rare bird, a man who dealt in moral ideas without falling into moralism and superior self-righteousness. Abraham Lincoln is the greatest of all interpreters of America’s moral meaning. He surpasses even Thomas Jefferson, though Lincoln himself might take exception to my claim. [1] Lincoln certainly gave Jefferson high praise, and he made[…]
Seeing Lincoln’s nationalism from an unlikely, and fresh, perspective: its connection, via the Enlightenment, to classical antiquity. In 1870 the former vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, offered what has surely become the best-known characterization of Abraham Lincoln’s nationalism. In Lincoln, Stephens suggested, the sentiment of Union “rose to the sublimity of a religious[…]