Slow Service.

In 1820 a letter sent from Baltimore regularly took three weeks to arrive in Saint Louis by boat and stagecoach while in the more-remote areas of the South "the mails ran seldom, if at all, and stages never." By 1834 steamboats had cut delivery times substantially, but as one postmaster admitted, "half the intelligence of the country is still carried in saddlebags." In the more-remote western frontier regions even the saddlebags were occasionally dispensed with. On the route from Green Bay to Chicago, about 250 miles, postal carriers had to walk with "sixty pounds of mail, two sacks of parched corn, and blankets," along with an Indian guide to keep from getting lost.

High Rates.

The nation's vast distances hindered the efficient distribution of the mail, but high postal rates also cut down on the number of letters ordinary Americans exchanged. Originally organized as a...