“Uncle CivilWarHumor, tell us about the postal system!"
“... really? Usually you ask about battles.”
“This IS a battle.”
“Ok, but strap yourselves in -- delivering mail in the 1860s was a bumpy ride. There were few roads and a lot of guerillas.”
“Like a safari?”
“Not quite …”

“At the start of the Civil War, the postal service was deep in debt and full of secessionists.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Yep. But Lincoln wanted to SAVE the postal system, not kill it with a slow death.”
“Sure. Cuz if he wanted to do that, he would’ve given McClellan a mail route."

“Who DID Lincoln pick to run the postal service, uncle?”
“Montgomery Blair.”
“Was Blair well-qualified?”
“Not really.”
“Did Abe owe the Blairs a favor?”
“Yep.”
(sigh) “Ah, Abe. Always the country lawyer wheeler-dealer.”
“They built this Republic, kid.”
“Sure. If we can keep it.”

“See, back then, there was no free delivery, very few people had letterboxes, and no railway cars carried mail. Sending a letter was a crapshoot.”
“So it was like using Amazon Prime.”
“Except it was 1861, so the employees were fairly paid and had decent working conditions.”

“See, mail played a crucial role in the early part of the war, when public opinion was the main battleground. And mail was a primary news source for the many Unionists in Southern or border states. So Blair realized being in the mail service wasn’t just another government job …”

“In fact, as Postmaster General, Blair made his employees take a loyalty oath to the U.S.”
“Now we have to make the Postmaster General do that.”
“Times change. The Rebels also set up their own mail service, after stealing supplies and equipment.”
“Like their last day on a job."

“For Civil War soldiers, sending and receiving letters was one of the most cherished aspects of daily life, and they hated mail delays.”
“Sure. Imagine if Twitter was down.”
“So to speed things up, Blair reorganized the military mail, and gave each regiment its own postmaster.”

“Blair made sending letters home free for soldiers -- the recipient paid postage if it was stamped Soldier’s Letter. And mail carriers were exempt from military service, so a ton of young men decided they REALLY wanted a mail route.”
“Probably didn’t drug-test back then, either.”

“But driving stagecoaches could be dangerous. Blair stopped the delivery of mail to seceded states, so bootleggers ran illegal routes between North & South.”
“Wow! It’s like ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ only if, instead of booze, Burt Reynolds bootlegged thank-you notes for Grandma.”

“But Blair’s biggest feat was free delivery. Before then, people had to literally GET their mail -- no easy trek in a lot of rural areas -- or pay a special carrier, who often got hijacked by mail thieves.”
“MAIL THIEVES? How is this not a movie starring Leo or one of the Ryans?"

“See, Blair had the CRAZY IDEA that the government should guarantee safe, efficient mail delivery, since it was kind of crucial to a functioning democracy.”
“And why fascists want to dismantle it.”
“Right. And the U.S. postal system soon became admired around the world.”

“In fact, Blair helped set the first international postage rates. Before then, if you wanted to send a letter to, say, Belgium, you had no idea how much it would cost.”
“Like ordering off Ebay in the early 2000s!”
“Blair also came up with money orders and railway postal cars.”

“Wow! Blair must have been beloved, huh, uncle?”
“Nope. During the 1864 election, the radical Republicans insisted Abe replace him with someone more to their liking, as part of the deal that saw their guy, John Fremont, bow out. Blair was perceived as too soft on emancipation.”

“So Blair fell on his sword and resigned.”
“Gosh, uncle, wouldn’t it be a shame if DeJoy fell on his sword? Like, what if he got up in the middle of the night and tripped over the looted Ottoman scimitar he probably keeps by his bedside to fight night terrors? I’d cry for days."