Routes to a Nation

This richly illustrated volume evokes the early history of the US postal system with 130 new full-color images of artifacts and historical documents from the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum

Travel back to the postal system’s humble origins in colonial America with Routes to a Nation, which traces the development of the post from trans-Atlantic communication through the Revolutionary War and follows its growth as the nation expanded through the 18th and early 19th centuries. The story of the network’s early days emerges from the 130 all-new high-quality photographs of letters, covers, seals, newspapers, stamps, and other artifacts, including many rarely seen archival images from the National Postal Museum’s collections.

From colonists resisting a postal network to the taxation debates of the early republic, the fledgling postal service was often entangled with its era’s hot-button political issues. This book illuminates the postal system’s role in the larger process of nation-building, as well as its impacts on the lives of the ordinary people who sent, received, and delivered the mail that fostered communication, facilitated trade, and connected communities.

• Mail carriers who completed the first postal routes across treacherous terrain
• Folded letters that offer first-hand accounts of 18th century life
• Ben Franklin’s tumultuous decades as colonial deputy postmaster general, marked by administrative reform and political conflict
• Mail that helped keep the patriot’s military informed during the Revolutionary War
• Politics of the post in the early republic: freedom of expression in newspapers, debates in financing expansion, and handling diplomatic channels

Routes to a Nation explores the personalities, controversies, and planning that shaped the continent-spanning postal system that has grown to provide service to more than 169 million addresses across every state, city, and town in the United States today.