The Birth of the Democratic Party

 

This early anti-Jackson cartoon lampooning his anti-bank policies shows a loyal Martin Van Buren cleaning up after Old Hickory's jackass.  It was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, uses of the donkey as the symbol for the Democratic Party.  But it didn't take immediately.  Anti-Democrat cartoonist Thomas Nash used the Tammany tiger as the party mascot at first.  The Democrats did not embrace the donkey until well into the 20th Century, long after the GOP had adopted the elephant.

Note—Yesterday we examined Andrew Jackson’s stunning victory at New Orleans in 1815.  Today we look at one of the most consequential results of the battle—the creation of America’s oldest political party.

The Democratic Party was founded at a Baltimore convention 195 years ago on January 8, 1827.  You may celebrate or lament the occasion depending on your viewpoint.  It was cobbled together from elements of the shattered Democratic Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison which had dominated American politics since the Revolution of 1800 and the virtual disappearance of the Federalist Party after the War of 1812.  The wizard of the new alignment was the boss of the New York State political machine known as the Albany Regency, Martin Van Buren, in the service of a charismatic leader—General Andrew Jackson.

Martin Van Buren, master of the Albany Regency and shrewd political operative, who organized the Democratic party as Jackson's creature.

The election of James Monroe, the last of the Virginia Dynasty of Founder Presidents after the collapse of the Federalists in 1822 ushered in what historians have called the Era of Good Feeling due to the lack of competition for the Democratic-Republicans.  The domination was so deep that even John Quincy Adams, the son of the only Federalist president, had joined the ascendent and served a Monroe’s Secretary of State and was his heir apparent to the Executive Mansion.

Unfortunately for Adams, he had incurred the wrath of the tempestuous general who mistakenly believed that the Secretary of State had been behind a court martial for illegally invading Spanish Florida and executing to British citizens who he believed had been arming rebellious Creek warriors.  It’s a long and complicated story but the truth was that although Adams was aghast at Jackson’s behavior which complicated efforts to acquire Florida by purchase and threatened a possible new conflict with Great Britain, he had come to Jackson’s defense against the charges.

Three of the main actors in the 1824 Presidential Election drama--Kentucky's Henry Clay who swung support to John Quincy Adams (center) in House of Representatives and was appointed Secretary of State and General Andrew Jackson.  Adams won a Pyrrhic victory.

Whatever the truth, Jackson vowed revenge by running against Adams in the election of 1824.  Jackson was the greatest military hero since George Washington and wildly popular in the South and West.  In a head-to-head contest Jackson would have won handily, but two others also entered the race—Georgia’s William Crawford, a Jeffersonian “Old Republican” and another Westerner and rising political star Henry Clay of Kentucky.  Although Jackson led winning the popular vote, carrying 11 states and winning 99 Electoral College votes with Adams behind with 7 state wins and 86 Electoral votes, the other two candidates each won 3 states and enough votes to deny a majority and Electoral College win.

The election was thrown into the House of Representatives where each state delegation cast a single vote.  Only the top three candidates—Jackson, Adams, and Crawford—were included in the House Vote.  Clay not so secretly rallied his former supporters for Adams who carried the House vote by a lop-sided margin.  Jackson was outraged, especially after Adams selected Clay to be his Secretary of State and by tradition a virtual heir apparent.  Jackson charged a “corrupt bargain” had been struck by Adams and Clay to win the election.

Meanwhile in New York State, Van Buren’s Albany Regency had finally gotten the upper hand against the Clinton political organization in New York City which had long led half of a political axis of the two most populous states, New York and Virginia, in support of the Jeffersonian party.  He saw a national ally in Jackson and began quietly organizing key political figures and operatives in every state in support of Jackson.  That led to the founding convention in Baltimore in time to organize behind Jackson and against Adams in the election of 1828. 

Running as a man of the people, painting Adams as aristocratic, and backed by an effective political organization Jackson humiliated and swamped the incumbent by an Electoral College vote of 178 to 83 carrying 15 states to 9.  The platform of Jackson and his party was individual liberty (for white men), limited government (except where Jackson himself chose to execute power), opposition to the Second Bank of the United States, opposition to federally funded internal improvements advocated by Henry Clay, rapid Western expansion, removal of Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River, and lowered tariffs.

Both Jackson’s policies and abrasive leadership style alienated many who began to coalesce into a new anti-Jacksonian party, the Whigs.  It was an inherently unstable and contradictory collection—remnant old New England Federalists like Daniel Webster, business interests appalled by the destruction of the Bank of the United States and resultant currency instability and wildcat banks leading to periodic financial panics, advocates of Clay’s American System of internal improvements, and largely aristocratic Southern Jeffersonians. 

After Jackson threatened to use military force against South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis over the Tariff, his own Vice President, Southern firebrand John C. Calhoun joined the Whigs asserting states’ rights—and expansion of slavery into all new territories and states.  The combination of pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery New Englanders made the Whigs a feeble coalition.  Democrats continued to dominate the Presidency and national politics up to the Civil War with only two Whig presidential victories, both by military heroes who quickly died in office and left weak vice-presidents with little or no party loyalty in charge.  The Whigs imploded and disappeared after Winfield Scott’s loss to Democratic nonentity Franklin Pierce in 1854.  Eventually the Republicans emerged as a new major party leading to the victory of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when Democrats split three ways over slavery issues.

A campaign banner for the last Whig Presidents.  Mexican War Hero Zachary Taylor died in office after splitting the Whigs over the extension of slavery.  Northerner Fillmore proved more amenable to Southern interests in the name of national unity and became a perpetual contender for being the worst president in American history, at least until the last Resident.

The Democrats long thrived on Jackson’s spoils system which replaced almost all Federal employees loyal political appointees who provided an army of campaign workers in every corner of the country.

This illustration for a Civil Service reform publication in the 1880's celebrated Jackson as the founder of the Spoils System.  But at that time Republican administrations reaped the benefit of the system.

The Democrats are now the oldest electoral party in the world by a wide margin, but they have flipped positions many times over their long history.  They were the backbone of the Jim Crow Era in the South and began to make strong inroads in big Northern cities with ethnic-based political machines.  They were for hard money and against greenback Treasury notes.  With Republicans in national ascendancy, the party suddenly became advocates of civil service reform.

In the 1890s a large portion of Democrats in the West and South became populists in favor of the “free coinage of silver” against a pure gold standard that made cash scarce and kept prices high; agitated for railroad rate reform and against monopolies, and in favor of democratic reforms like voter referendums and recall elections.  They continued to be in contest to business and hard money conservatives.

Despite this dramatic cartoon, William Jennings Bryan never really swallowed the Democratic Party even after he won nomination on a populist free silver platform.. Progressives remained an important, but minority part of the Democratic coalition.

In the early 20th Century, they began to attract support of major labor unions and vied with the Socialist Party for others.  Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic party progressive, enacted some major labor reforms in the areas of child labor, job safety, and working hours.  Yet the same administration violently crushed World War I strikes and led the worst domestic suppression of dissent in the post-war Red Scare years.  Wilson became a hero to liberals for his post-war vision of the Fourteen Points and for the League of Nations.  Democrats largely became advocates of international action and against isolationism.  The establishment of the Federal Reserve System put the party firmly behind national banking.

Opposition to draconian Republican immigration restrictions in the 1920’s and in favor of the repeal of Prohibition earned the loyalty of many working class voters.

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal pro-labor policies won the enduring loyalty of workers and the union movement.

In the face of the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal put an end to Jacksonian limited Federal powers.  The President and his party borrowed heavily from old Socialist Party platforms to enact Social Security and unemployment insurance, guarantee labor union rights, use public works programs, and many other popular reforms.  Even Southern Democrats bought in as long as Blacks were largely excluded from the benefits.

World War II and its aftermath created support for a vast standing armed forces with virtually unlimited funds for new arms and weapons and backed world-wide interventionism whenever American—read business—interests might be threatened.

The Civil Rights Movement gained steady support among national Democrats and Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act began the process of Southern Democrats abandoning the party for the Republicans who had gone from the Party of Lincoln to states’ rights fans and were increasingly willing to employ wink-and-nod code words in favor of white supremacy.  By the 21st Century that process was complete.

Meanwhile opposition to the Vietnam War led to growing anti-war sentiment through much of the party and peace advocates continued to struggle with cold-warriors and interventionists.  Widespread support for the Equal Rights Amendment, gender protections under Civil Rights law, and for abortion rights led to a steady swing of women, particularly college educated and middle class women, from the Republicans to the Democrats who now enjoy a substantial edge in that demographic.

Blacks have become the most loyal Democratic party supporters by a wide margin and Latinx voters with the exception of Florida Cubans also reliable.  Together with the college educated and youth voters they elected Barack Obama as the first Black President.

Black voters turned out in droves in 2018 despite elaborate Republican voter suppression efforts like the ones in Georgia that closed convenient polling places in minority areas causing long lines and waits.  Democratic support for voting rights protections continue to be important to them.

Recognizing that expanding the voter pool worked against them, Republicans have become relentless in attempting voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other attacks on access to the polls.  Meanwhile they have exploited resentments of many working class voters who believe they have been insulted and ignored by an elite cabal robbing complacent and ineffective Democratic Party leadership of once solid support.

Democratic Socialists became a small but growing part of the party in Congress and scored electoral victories around the country.  Their policies are aimed at, among other things, winning back working class support by providing life-changing new benefits.  Party so-called centrists fret that they will be labeled communists or that powerful business backers of the party will turn on them.

The former Fraudster in Chief kept a portrait of Andrew Jackson over looking his Oval Office desk.  His other political role modal  was Adolph Hitler whose Mein Kamf  he long kept on his bed table for inspiration. 

However, that struggle turns out, the Democratic Party today bears almost no resemblance to the one founded by Van Buren and Jackson.  But it is telling that Jackson was the former President, the Orange Menace’s, favorite presidential role model.  Both shared fragile egos, inflated self-importance, and dictatorial impulses.  And like Jackson Trump has a political party personally loyal only to him.

But despite this, it is impossible to imagine the nationalist and staunchly unionist Jackson not responding to even a pathetic rag-tag insurrection and attempt to seize the Federal Capital with anything less than all of the fully armed troops at his disposal and canon loaded with grape shot and hanging the leaders—especially those elected to uphold the Constitution with little mercy or ceremony.

It’s the Birthday of the Democratic Party

This early anti-Jackson cartoon lampooning his anti-bank policies shows a loyal Martin Van Buren cleaning up after Old Hickory's jackass.  It was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, uses of the donkey as the symbol for the Democratic Party.  But it didn't take immediately.  Anti-Democrat cartoonist Thomas Nash used the Tammany tiger as the party mascot at first.  The Democrats did not embrace the donkey until well into the 20th Century, long after the GOP had adopted the elephant.

The Democratic Party was founded at a Baltimore convention 195 years ago on January 8, 1827.  You may celebrate or lament the occasion depending on your viewpoint.  It was cobbled together from elements of the shattered Democratic Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison which had dominated American politics since the Revolution of 1800 and the virtual disappearance of the Federalist Party after the War of 1812.  The wizard of the new alignment was the boss of the New York State political machine known as the Albany Regency, Martin Van Buren, in the service of a charismatic leader—General Andrew Jackson.

Martin Van Buren, master of the Albany Regency and shrewd political operative, who organized the Democratic party as Jackson's creature.

The election of James Monroe, the last of the Virginia Dynasty of Founder Presidents after the collapse of the Federalists in 1822 ushered in what historians have called the Era of Good Feeling due to the lack of competition for the Democratic-Republican.  The domination was so deep that even John Quincy Adams, the son of the only Federalist president, had joined the ascendant and served a Monroe’ Secretary of State and was his heir apparent to the Executive Mansion.

Unfortunately for Adams, he had incurred the wrath of the tempestuous general who mistakenly believed that the Secretary of State had been behind a court martial for illegally invading Spanish Florida and executing to British citizens who he believed had been arming rebellious Creek warriors.  It’s a long and complicated story but the truth was that although Adams was aghast at Jackson’s behavior which complicated efforts to acquire Florida by purchase and threatened a possible new conflict with Great Britain, he had come to Jackson’s defense against the charges.

Three of the main actors in the 1824 Presidential Election drama--Kentucky's Henry Clay who swung support to John Quincy Adams (center) in House of Representatives and was appointed Secretary of State and General Andrew Jackson.  Adams won a Pyrrhic victory.

Whatever the truth, Jackson vowed revenge by running against Adams in the election of 1824.  Jackson was the greatest military hero since George Washington and wildly popular in the South and West.  In a head-to-head contest Jackson would have won handily, but two others also entered the race—Georgia’s William Crawford, a Jeffersonian “Old Republican” and another Westerner and rising political star Henry Clay of Kentucky.  Although Jackson led winning the popular vote, carrying 11 states and winning 99 Electoral College vote with Adams behind with 7 state wins and 86 Electoral votes, the other two candidates each won 3 states and enough votes to deny a majority and Electoral College win.

The election was thrown into the House of Representatives where each state delegation cast a single vote.  Only the top three candidates—Jackson, Adams, and Crawford—were included in the House Vote.  Clay not so secretly rallied his former supporters for Adams who carried the House vote by a lop-sided margin.  Jackson was outraged, especially after Adams selected Clay to be his Secretary of State and by tradition a virtual heir apparent.  Jackson charged a “corrupt bargain” had been struck by Adams and Clay to win the election.

Meanwhile in New York State, Van Buren’s Albany Regency had finally gotten the upper hand against the Clinton political organization in New York City which had long led half of a political axis of the two most populous states, New York and Virginia, in support of the Jeffersonian party.  He saw a national ally in Jackson and began quietly organizing key political figures and operatives in every state in support of Jackson.  That led to the founding convention in Baltimore in time to organize behind Jackson and against Adams in the election of 1828. 

Running as a man of the people, painting Adams as aristocratic, and backed by an effective political organization humiliated and swamped the incumbent by an Electoral College vote of 178 to 83 carrying 15 states to 9.  The policies of Jackson and his party were in favor of individual liberty (for white men), limited government (except where Jackson himself chose to execute power, opposition to the Second Bank of the United States, opposition to federally funded internal improvements advocated by Henry Clay, rapid Western expansion, removal of Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River, and lowered tariffs.

A campaign banner for the last Whig Presidents.  Mexican War Hero Zachary Taylor died in office after splitting the Whigs over the extension.  Northerner Fillmore proved more amenable to Southern interests in the name of national unity and became a perpetual contender for being the worst president in American history, at least until the last Resident.

Both Jackson’s policies and abrasive leadership style alienated many who began to coalesce into a new anti-Jacksonian party, the Whigs.  It was an inherently unstable and contradictory collection—remnant old New England Federalists like Daniel Webster, business interests appalled by the destruction of the Bank of the United States and resultant currency instability and wildcat banks leading to periodic financial panics, advocates of Clay’s American System of internal improvements, and largely aristocratic Southern Jeffersonians. 

After Jackson threatened to use military force against South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis over the Tariff, his own Vice President, Southern firebrand John C. Calhoun joined the Whigs asserting states’ rights—and expansion of slavery into all new territories and states.  The combination of pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery New Englanders made the Whigs a feeble coalition.  Democrats continued to dominate the Presidency and national politics up to the Civil War with only two Whig presidential victories, both by military heroes who quickly died in office and left weak vice-presidents with little or no party loyalty in charge.  The Whigs imploded and disappeared after Winfield Scott’s loss to Democratic nonentity Franklin Pierce in 1854.  Eventually the Republicans emerged as a new major party leading to the victory of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when Democrats split three ways over slavery issues.

This illustration for a Civil Service reform publication in the 1880's celebrated Jackson as the founder of the Spoils System.  But at that time Republican administrations reaped the benefit of the system.

The Democrats long thrived on Jackson’s spoils system which replaced almost all Federal employees loyal political appointees who provided an army of campaign workers in every corner of the country.

The Democrats are now the oldest electoral party in the world by a wide margin, but they have flipped positions many times over their long history.  They were the backbone of the Jim Crow Era in the South and began to make strong inroads in big Northern cities with ethnic-based political machines.  They were for hard money and against greenback Treasury notes.  With Republicans in national ascendancy, the party suddenly became advocates of civil service reform.

Despite this dramatic cartoon, William Jennings Bryan never really swallowed the Democratic Party even after he won nomination on a populist free silver platform.. Progressives remained an important, but minority part of the Democratic coalition.

In the 1890s a large portion of Democrats in the West and South became populists in favor of the “free coinage of silver” against a pure gold standard that made cash scarce and kept prices high; agitated for railroad rate reform and against monopolies, and in favor of democratic reforms like voter referendums and recall elections.  They continued to be in contest to business and hard money conservatives.

In the early 20th Century, they began to attract support of major labor unions and vied with the Socialist Party for others.  Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic party progressive, enacted some major labor reforms in the areas of child labor, job safety, and working hours.  Yet the same administration violently crushed World War I strikes and led the worst domestic suppression of dissent in the post-war Red Scare years.  Wilson became a hero to liberals for his post-war vision of the Fourteen Points and for the League of Nations.  Democrats largely became advocates of international action and against isolationism.  The establishment of the Federal Reserve System put the party firmly behind national banking.

Opposition to draconian Republican immigration restrictions in the 1920’s and in favor of the repeal of Prohibition earned the loyalty of many working class voters.

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal pro-labor policies won the enduring loyalty of workers and the union movement.

In the face of the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal put an end to Jacksonian limited Federal powers.  The President and his party borrowed heavily from old Socialist Party platforms to enact Social Security and unemployment insurance, guarantee labor union rights, use public works programs, and many other popular reforms.  Even Southern Democrats bought in as long as Blacks were largely excluded from the benefits.

World War II and its aftermath created support for a vast standing armed forces with virtually unlimited funds for new arms and weapons and backed world-wide interventionism whenever American—read business—interests might be threatened.

The Civil Rights Movement gained steady support among national Democrats and Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act began the process of Southern Democrats abandoning the party for the Republicans who had gone from the Party of Lincoln to states’ rights fan and were increasingly willing to employ wink-and-nod code words in favor of white supremacy.  By the 21st Century that process was complete.

Meanwhile opposition to the Vietnam War led to growing anti-war sentiment through much of the party and peace advocates continued to struggle with cold-warriors and interventionist.  Widespread support for the Equal Rights Amendment, gender protections under Civil Rights law, and for abortion rights led to a steady swing of women, particularly college educated and middle class women, from the Republican to the Democrats who now enjoy a substantial edge in that demographic.

Blacks have become the most loyal Democratic party supporters by a wide margin and Latinx voters with the exception of Florida Cubans also reliable.  Together with the college educated and youth voters they elected Barack Obama as the first Black President.

Recognizing that expanding the voter pool worked against them, Republicans have become relentless in attempting voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other attacks on access to the polls.  Meanwhile they have exploited resentments of many working class voters who believe they have been insulted and ignored by an elite cabal robbing complacent and ineffective Democratic Party leadership of once solid support.

Black voters turned out in droves in 2018 despite elaborate Republican voter suppression efforts like the ones in Georgia that closed convenient polling places in minority areas causing long lines and waits.  Democratic support for voting rights protections continue to be important to them.

Democratic Socialists have become a growing part of the party in Congress and scoring electoral victories around the country.  Their policies are aimed at, among other things, winning back working class support by providing life-changing new benefits.  Party so-called centrists fret that they will be labeled communists or that powerful business backers of the party will turn on them.

The former Fraudster in Chief kept a portrait of Andrew Jackson over looking his Oval Office desk.  His other political role modal  was Adolph Hitler whose Mein Kamf  he long kept on his bed table for inspiration. 

However that struggle turns out, the Democratic Party today bears almost no resemblance to the one founded by Van Buren and Jackson.  But it is telling that Jackson was the Orange Menace’s favorite president roll model.  Both shared fragile egos, inflated self-importance, and dictatorial impulses.  And both have political parties personally loyal only to them. 

Moving the Mail Was the Federal Government’s First Order of Business

A Colonial rider on the Old Post Road makes a delivery in a village along his route.

Note:  Part two of a series on the Postal Service.  Today we learn that mail service predated both independence and the Constitution and has been vital at every stage of our national development.

Postal service in America can point to various birth dates and milestones, but on February 20, 1792 President George Washington signed into law the legislation that created Post Office Department.  That regularized the new Constitutional Federal Government’s already loosely organized postal service and elevated the Post Master General to cabinet rank.

Benjamin Franklin, as he was so many other instances, was key in developing a Colonial postal system beginning in 1737 as postmaster in Philadelphia.  He did such a good job in organizing mail services in Pennsylvania’s principle city and his political connections were so good that he became joint postmaster general for all of the British Colonies in 1753.  This was a lucrative political plum—his remuneration came partly from a cut of postal fees.  It also gave him an edge in circulating his newspaper, almanac, and other products of his printing business.

But Franklin threw himself into organizing a haphazard postal system that barely operated between many cities.  He oversaw surveying and marking regular routes from Massachusetts’ northern settlements in what is now Maine to Georgia.  The Old Post Road, stitched together from local roads followed the route that became U.S. Highway 1.  Using relay riders he established overnight service between Philadelphia and New York and between New York and Boston.  And he worked out standardized postage rates based on weight and distance.

Benjamin Franklin kept his lucrative post as Colonial Post Master General even during his long residence in London as a Colonial agent.  This portrait was done shortly after his arrival in England in 1757

By the time Franklin departed for London in 1857 for his long residency there as Colonial Agent for Pennsylvania and subsequently other colonies, the postal service was well established and functioning.  He kept his appointment—and the emoluments that went with it—while others managed its day to day affairs.  That cozy relationship ended when he was ousted in disgrace for his part in intercepting and sending to Boston for publication embarrassing letters of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson urging the Crown to crack down on obstreperous Bostonians in 1773.

When Franklin finally returned in 1775 he found the Colonies in an uproar and his postal system rusty and disrupted by political tensions.  By the time he made his way to Philadelphia in May of that year, fighting had already broken out at Lexington and Concord and a hastily assembled militia army was laying siege to British occupied Boston.  Franklin was quickly appointed a delegate to the Second Constitutional Convention.

Meanwhile another Philadelphia printer and newspaper publisher, William Goddard vexed by disruptions in circulating his Pennsylvania Chronicle, drew up a detailed proposal for the Colonies’ own Continental Post and laid it before Congress on October 5, 1774.   When Franklin took his seat he enthusiastically endorsed the plan.  With the outbreak of war, Congress turned almost immediately to the Post plan—really its first important piece of business not directly tied to the war. 

The interest was understandable.  After all, the new nation owed its existence to the Patriots’ Committees of Correspondence which both spread vital news but also fostered some cooperation between the Colonies in opposing British taxation and punitive measures.  And while each Colony still viewed itself as an independent sovereign state only loosely allied and sectional differences put a strain on even that relationship, postal service was the fragile link that stitched them together.

On July 26, 1775 Congress adopted the Goddard plan and naturally appointed Franklin as its first Postmaster General.  He did not serve long before he departed to Paris to take up new duties as Minister to France.  But Franklin made sure that the job went to his son in law Richard Bache in November, 1775.

Through the inevitable disruptions of the Revolution and under the barely functional Articles of Confederation, postal service limped along and actually deteriorated.  It was unreliable outside a narrow coastal strip and virtually non-existent in frontier settlements.  When Washington took office in the temporary capitol in New York, Samuel Osgood served as Post Master General overseeing the rag-tag service he had inherited from the Confederation government.

When the Capital moved to Philadelphia Timothy Pickering, a Revolutionary War veteran and rising political star, assumed the job.  With the establishment of the Post Office Department, he was officially elevated to the Cabinet joining the Secretaries of the Treasury, State, and War, and the Attorney General.  He became a staunch ally of Alexander Hamilton in the growing rift with Thomas Jefferson.

Pickering served as Postmaster General under Washington until 1795 when he was briefly made Secretary of War and then Secretary of State replacing Jefferson.  He continued in that role under John Adams until being dismissed for his vocal opposition to the President’s policy of negotiating an end to the Naval Quasi-War with France.

One of the primary duties of early Postmasters General was recommending local postmaster appointments.  Under Washington these were generally deferred to the recommendations of local officials and dignitaries generally regardless of political opinions, although the Old General often showed favoritism to veterans, especially his former officers.  This was in keeping with Washington’s opposition to faction.  But as tensions rose between Hamilton and Jefferson and their supporters, Hamilton’s ally Pickering began to screen political opinions.

This took greater hold under John Adams after the emergence of the Federalists, Democratic-Republicans and the two party system.  Although incumbents were rarely turned out unless they were particularly noisy or an important local Federalist wanted the job, new appointments were reliable Federalists.  When Thomas Jefferson triumphed in the Revolution of 1800, he likewise rewarded loyal Republicans although he also refrained from wholesale replacement.

The growing young nation required hundreds and then thousands of local postmasters for the expanding system.  It was the largest domestic undertaking of the Federal Government, outstripping the skeletal military establishment, customs collection, land sales offices, and the rudimentary Federal court system.  Appointments were coveted because duties were not onerous for the largely part time positions and there was a steady, if unspectacular income from collecting postage fees—then customarily from the recipient. 

More importantly most postmasters set up their operations in the stores, taverns, and inns that they operated as their primary businesses.  Since there was no home or business delivery, mail had to be picked up in the local post offices, located in these businesses in all but the largest cities.  That made the postmasters’ establishments natural community centers which attracted customers and loafers alike.  They were places where politics was always a hot topic of discussion.  It was profitable both for the postmasters and for the political parties that sponsored them.

In addition as postal services grew there were more postal employees—couriers, clerks, and such each and every one of which was a job filled by Presidential appointment.  And there were contracts for carrying the mail to be allotted to stage coach lines, river boats, coastal packets, and eventually railroads and each contract was an opportunity to reward faithful party supporters.   Patronage for the administration in all of its forms became the engine that drove the post office.  Postmasters General became the chief political operative in the cabinet and the President’s ties to his party.  He could award jobs by proxy to local party bosses to shore up support and prevent defections to potential challengers in the President’s own party—a big advantage for unpopular chief executives.

From 1800 on all of those advantages fell pretty much entirely to the Republicans, as the Jeffersonians became known during the so-called Era of Good Feelings while the Federalists winked out as a political force.  But with the election of John Quincy Adams as a National Republican against a split field led by Andrew Jackson running as an old conservative, that began to change.  Jackson was defeated in 1828 but came roaring back to win a historic victory in 1832 at the head of the re-named Democratic Party.

This anti-Jackson cartoon lamented the spoils system which made the Post Office a political plumb.

Jackson ran as the popular candidate of the common man.  One of the explicit points of his platform was instituting the spoils system—“to the victor belong the spoils,” He declared.  He painted this as a democratic reform to replace all of the stuffed shirts and little plutocrats employed by that “haughty aristocrat” Adams.  True to his word, Jackson was no sooner in office than he went to work cleaning house in the Post Office from top to bottom replacing postmasters and clerks with loyal Democrats no matter how rustic.  In doing so he also unleashed the hordes of office seekers who would mob the halls of the Executive Mansion and pester presidents for decades to come.

Young Abraham Lincoln was appointed Post Master of New Salem, Illinois under a Whig administration and operated out of his small grocery store until it failed.

When it came their turns, Whigs and Republicans played the game with same fervor as the Democrats and the post-Civil War Republicans got it down to a machine-like science.

Despite this, the Post Office matured and grew with country adding innovations that constantly improved and expanded service—adhesive postage stamps, home delivery in urban areas, eventually Rural Free Delivery as well,  the transportation of vast quantities of mail by rail, and the introduction postal sorting on the fly in specialized mail cars.  In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the remarkable efficiency of the U.S. Post Office was the envy of the world.

Rural Free Delivery (RFD) was a boon to countryside residents and voters did not forget that it was a Republican administration that provided it

Political patronage and the spoils system became central political issues of the Gilded Age.  After fits and starts Civil Service Reform made most Post Office and other low-level Federal jobs merit positions to be filled by qualified applicants who could pass competitive examinations.  But local postmasters and higher level managers and executives remained political appointees.  The game was changed, not eliminated.

Urban mail men like these in the 1890s carried not only letters and publications in their pushcarts but all sorts of packages and other items directly to homes and businesses.

In keeping with the tradition of highly political Postmasters General, for instance, Franklin D,  Roosevelt tapped the political operative most responsible for his rise in New York Democratic circles and securing the presidential nomination in 1932—James A. Farley.

The Post Office adapted to the post-World War II America with great success.  It employed tens of thousands of veterans who got additional points added to their civil service examinations.  It also became truly integrated even in the Jim Crowe South and lifted many Blacks and other minorities into the middle class.  It adapted air mail to the jet age, eventually eliminating it as a separate mail class and moving most Frist Class Mail where possible by air.  The introduction of the Zip Code and automated sorting sped the mails and kept down postage rates.

Then the Post Office Department was reformed right out of existence under President Richard Nixon in 1971 and reborn as the United States Postal Service, a quasi-public corporation run by a Board of Governors but answerable to Congress.  The Postmaster General vanished from the Cabinet.  The new corporation was charged with running like a business and expected to turn a profit.  That was made difficult by a number of restrictions placed on it by Congress and then made impossible when the USPS was mandated to fully fund pensions decades into the future, huge payments that make it impossible to report a profit and has allowed rightwing ideologues in Congress to declare it a failure and push for massive service cuts, continuing steep annual postage rate hikes, and eventually its complete replacement by competing private companies like Federal Express and UPS.

Letter carriers return to work after a 1971 Postal Strike that gave Richard Nixon leverage to dump the Post Office Department and replace it with a quasi-public corporation meant to run like a business and turn a profit.

Under this pressure service has suffered and employee moral destroyed by speed-up schemes, doubled workloads, and an intentionally harsh and repressive management style.  American mail service now lags far behind that in other developed industrial countries.  If it fails and is replaced by private industry expect home delivery to be cut back to once a week.   Thousands of local post offices will be closed and the private companies will have no obligation to serve small and isolated communities at all just as unregulated rail and bus services have left such places.

After all in the coming Randian Libertarian utopia the Republicans promise us private profit is everything and any losers get exactly what is coming to them at the hands of their betters.  Why to embrace the idea of postal service as a public utility operating for the common social good would be damn socialism!  Just what old Ben Franklin and George Washington had in mind.