Postage stamps and postal history of the United States

Postal service in the United States began with the delivery of stampless letters whose cost was borne by the receiving person, later encompassed pre-paid letters carried by private mail carriers and provisional post offices, and culminated in a system of universal prepayment that required all letters to bear nationally issued adhesive postage stamps.
In the earliest days, ship captains arriving in port with stampless mail would advertise in the local newspaper names of those having mail and for them to come collect and pay for it, if not already paid for by the sender. Postal delivery in the United States was a matter of haphazard local organization until after the Revolutionary War, when eventually a national postal system was established. Stampless letters, paid for by the receiver, and private postal systems, were gradually phased out after the introduction of adhesive postage stamps, first issued by the U.S. government post office July 1, 1847, in the denominations of five and ten cents, with the use of stamps made mandatory in 1855.
The issue and use of adhesive postage stamps continued during the 19th century primarily for first-class mail. Each of these stamps generally bore the face or bust of an American president or another historically important statesman. However, once the Post Office realized during the 1890s that it could increase revenues by selling stamps as "collectibles", it began issuing commemorative stamps, first in connection with important national expositions, later for the anniversaries of significant American historical events. Continued technological innovation subsequently prompted the introduction of special stamps, such as those for use with airmail, zeppelin mail, registered mail, certified mail, and so on. Postage due stamps were issued for some time and were pasted by the post office to letters having insufficient postage with the postage due to be paid to the postal carrier at the receiving address.
Today, many stamps issued by the post office are self-adhesive, and no longer require that the stamps be "licked" to activate the glue on their back. In many cases, post office clerks now use Postal Value Indicators, which are computer labels, instead of stamps.
Where for a century-and-a-half or so, stamps were almost invariably denominated with their values the United States post office now sells non-denominated "forever" stamps for use on first-class and international mail. These stamps are still valid for the full rate even if there is a rate increase. However, for other uses, adhesive stamps with denomination indicators are still available and sold.

Early postal history

Postal services began in the first half of the 17th century serving the first American colonies of Britain and France; today, the United States Postal Service is a large government organization providing a wide range of services across the United States and its territories abroad.
In the American colonies, informal independently-run postal routes began in Boston as early as 1639, with Boston to New York City service starting in 1672. Courier service began between Montreal and Quebec City by 1693, and likely occurred earlier, as Pedro da Silva, a courier, had arrived more than 20 years before that.
Officially sanctioned mail service began in 1692 when King William III granted to an English nobleman a delivery "patent" that included the exclusive right to establish and collect a formal postal tax on official documents of all kinds. Years later, in 1765, taxation implemented through the mandatory purchase of stamps was an issue that helped to spark the American Revolution. The tax was repealed a year later, and few were ever actually used in the colonies, but they were sold, including in Nova Scotia and the British Caribbean islands.
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, mail routes among the colonies existed along the few roads between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Trois Rivieres, and Quebec City. Halifax stationer Benjamin Leigh started postal service in Nova Scotia by 1754. The following year, the British post office inaugurated a monthly packet run from Britain to New York, an attempt to improve military communications. From New York, any available ships carried mail to port cities, including Halifax. In the middle 18th century, individuals like Benjamin Franklin and William Goddard were the colonial postmasters who managed the mails then, and were the general architects of a postal system that started out as an alternative to the Crown Post which became more distrusted as the American Revolution drew near. The postal system that Franklin and Goddard forged out of the American Revolution became the standard for the new U.S. Post Office and is a system whose basic designs are still used in the United States Postal Service today.

Post offices and postmarks

In 1775, when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first Postmaster General, the U.S. Post Office was born. So important was the Postmaster General that in 1829 this position was included among those in the President's Cabinet. As America began to grow and new towns and villages began to appear, so too did the Post Office along with them. The dates and postmarks generated from these places often have provided the historian with a window into a given time and place. Each postmark is unique with its own name of state and town, in addition to its distinctive date.
Post offices that existed along railroad lines and at various military posts have their own special historical aspect. Mail and postmarks generated from prisoner-of-war camps during the Civil War, or from aboard naval ships, each with a U.S. Post Office aboard, can and have offered insights into United States history and are avidly sought after by historians and collectors alike.
Between 1874 and 1976 post offices were categorized from first to fourth classes based on the amount of revenue they generated, with first being the highest.

Mail before postage stamps

Before the introduction of stamps, it was the recipient of mail—not the sender—who generally paid the cost of postage, giving the fee directly to the postman on delivery. The task of collecting money for letter after letter greatly slowed the postman on his route. Moreover, the addressee would at times refuse a piece of mail, which then had to be taken back to the post office. Only occasionally did a sender pay delivery costs in advance, an arrangement that usually required a personal visit to the post office. To be sure, postmasters allowed some citizens to run charge accounts for their delivered and prepaid mail, but bookkeeping on these constituted another inefficiency.
Postage stamps revolutionized this process, leading to universal prepayment; but a precondition for their issue by a nation was the establishment of standardized rates for delivery throughout the country. If postal fees were to remain a patchwork of many different jurisdictional rates, the use of stamps would only produce limited gains in efficiency, for postal clerks would still have to spend time calculating the rates on many letters: only then would senders know how much postage to put on them.

Provisional issue stamps

The introduction of postage stamps in the UK in May 1840 was received with great interest in the United States. Later that year, Daniel Webster rose in the U.S. Senate to recommend that the recent English postal reforms—standardized rates and the use of postage stamps—be adopted in America.
It would be private enterprise, however, that brought stamps to the U.S. On February 1, 1842, a new carrier service called "City Despatch Post" began operations in New York City, introducing the first adhesive postage stamp ever produced in the western hemisphere, which it required its clients to use for all mail. This stamp was a 3¢ issue bearing a rather amateurish drawing of George Washington, printed from line engraved plates in sheets of 42 images. The company had been founded by Henry Thomas Windsor, a London merchant who at the time was living in Hoboken, New Jersey. Alexander M. Greig was advertised as the post's "agent", and as a result, historians and philatelists have tended to refer to the firm simply as "Greig's City Despatch Post", making no mention of Windsor. In another innovation, the company placed mail-collection boxes around the city for the convenience of its customers.
A few months after its founding, the City Despatch Post was sold to the U.S. government, which renamed it the "United States City Despatch Post". The government began operation of this local post on August 16, 1842, under an Act of Congress of some years earlier that authorized local delivery. Greig, retained by the Post Office to run the service, kept the firm's original Washington stamp in use, but soon had its lettering altered to reflect the name change. In its revised form, this issue accordingly became the first postage stamp produced under the auspices of a government in the Western Hemisphere.
An Act of Congress of March 3, 1845, established uniform postal rates throughout the nation, with a uniform rate of five cents for distances under 300 miles and ten cents for distances between 300 and 3,000 miles. However, Congress did not authorize the production of stamps for nationwide use until 1847; still, postmasters realized that standard rates now made it feasible to produce and sell "provisional" issues for prepayment of uniform postal fees, and printed these in bulk. Such provisionals included both prepaid envelopes and stamps, mostly of crude design, the New York Postmaster's Provisional being the only one of quality comparable to later stamps.
The provisional issues of Baltimore were notable for the reproduced signature of the city's postmaster—James M. Buchanan, a cousin to President James Buchanan. All provisional issues are rare, some inordinately so: at a Siegel Gallery auction in New York in March 2012, an example of the Millbury provisional fetched $400,000, while copies of the Alexandria and Annapolis provisionals each sold for $550,000. Eleven cities printed provisional stamps in 1845 and 1846:

The 1845 Congressional act did, in fact, raise the rate on one significant class of mail: the so-called "drop letter"—i. e., a letter delivered from the same post office that collected it. Previously one cent, the drop letter rate became two cents.