Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution granted Congress the power to establish post offices and post roads.
Newspaper distribution was major priority of mail
After a previous monopoly grant to a private entrepreneur failed to generate a profit, the British government took over the postal service in 1707 and operated a monopoly on mail services within the 13 colonies. Some postmasters gave themselves a competitive advantage by printing and distributing newspapers through the mail and denying the same privilege to their competitors (Desai 2007, 680).
In the 1750s, deputy postmaster generals Benjamin Franklin (a victim of prior practices) and William Hunter provided for the mail to carry all such papers, which were increasingly used to criticize British policies. The postmaster generals also facilitated the exchange of information by allowing printers to share newspapers through the mail without fees (Kielbowicz 1983, 256).
As the British vested officials with the power to decide which papers to deliver, William Goddard, who printed the Pennsylvania Chronicle, created an alternate mail delivery system, which the Continental Congress eventually substituted for the British system.
In 1782, Congress specifically provided that newspapers would be delivered through the mails “at such moderate rates as the Postmaster General shall establish” (Desai 2007, 684).
Lower mailing rates given to newspapers
In 1792, the new Congress under the Constitution adopted further legislation on the postal service. In setting rates, from 6 cents to 25 cents per letter (depending on the distance it was being sent), Congress provided that newspapers would be charged only 1 or 1 1/2 cents, again based on distance. The law also allowed designated governmental officials including the president, vice president, cabinet officers, and members of Congress to send mail related to their offices for free. This practice, which continues today, is known as the franking privilege.
To facilitate the exchange of information, the law continued the earlier practice that provided that “every printer of newspapers may send one paper to each and every other printer of newspapers within the United States, free of postage, under such regulations, as the Postmaster General shall provide.”
Contrary to British practice, the law also prohibited postmasters from opening mail without a search warrant (Balkin 2012, 3).
Congress adopts mail rates for magazine, pamphlets
In 1794, Congress adopted a subsequent act that allowed for the distribution of magazines and pamphlets, which were typically balkier and more difficult to transport, by mail, but charged higher rates for them and predicated their distribution on the convenience or inconvenience of their transport (Kielbowiczz 1983, 268). In 1815, Postmaster General Return J. Meigs Jr. decided to exclude such magazines and pamphlets altogether after toying with the idea of exempting publications by Bible societies from this exclusion (modern laws permit the distribution of magazines and books at reduced rates).
From 1804 to 1820, the postmaster general, a Jefferson appointee who was suspicious of papers from larger cities, further encouraged his deputies to encourage subscriptions to local papers rather than those published elsewhere.
Early leaders saw benefit in promoting mail delivery of newspapers
The law effectively used monies collected through sending mail to subsidize the distribution of newspapers. Much of the impetus for this came from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who believed that the distribution of newspapers would better inform public opinion and help bind the nation, which was so large, together.
Federalists generally supported the law on the basis that it would distribute news from commercial centers throughout the rest of the nation while Democratic-Republicans thought it would be a way to hold governmental officials to account by publicizing their misdeeds to voters.
In an essay on “Public Opinion” that he published in the National Gazette of Dec. 19, 1791, Madison observed that:
Whatever facilitates a general intercourse of sentiments, as good roads, domestic commerce, a free press, and particularly a circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people, and Representatives going from, and returning among every part of them, is equivalent to a contraction of territorial limits, and is favorable to liberty, where these may be too extensive.
The law encouraged publishers to use the mails to deliver their papers and was quite successful. The number of newspapers increased from 73 in 1783 to 620 in 1820 (Stasavage 2020, 250).
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.