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Ben Franklin's ghost: world peace, American slavery, and the global politics of information before the Universal Postal Union*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2015

Peter A. Shulman
Peter A. Shulman*
Affiliation:
11201 Euclid Avenue, Mather House 304, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA E-mail: peter.shulman@case.edu
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Abstract

Attributing revolutionary potential to new international communications technology, notably the internet, is not new. On a global scale, similar ideas emerged in the mid nineteenth century in relation to government-subsidized mail steamers. These visions remained utopian, then as now, although some nations went further than others in attempting to implement ‘world peace’ and ‘social improvement’ through communications. Before widespread electrical transmissions, Americans created the blueprint for such utopian visions through mail steamers. Americans had long considered their postal system socially transformative; the development of mail steamers turned that social vision outwards to the globe. This article examines two movements of the 1850s that sought change through global communications: using mail steamers to resettle American free blacks in Africa and reducing international postage rates to such a low rate that increased communications would prevent war. These two nearly simultaneous histories suggest that the evolving concept of the nation-state deserves further investigation as an element at the conjuncture of global communications and social reform.

Keywords

Elihu Burrittmail steamerspeace movementspostal reformslavery
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , July 2015 , pp. 212 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Thank you to Heidi Tworek and Simone Müller for their heroic organizational and editorial insights, and additional thanks for guidance and suggestions from Sebastian Conrad, Richard R. John, two anonymous reviewers, and participants in both the 2013 ‘Intellectual foundations of global commerce and communications’ conference at Harvard and attendees at the 2012 Society for the History of Technology conference in Cleveland, Ohio, where I presented early drafts of this article.

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41 Congressional Globe, 20 September 1850, pp. 1889–90.

42 Congressional Globe, 23 September 1850, pp. 1914–5; 19 September 1850, pp. 1867–8; Congressional Globe Appendix, 19 September 1850, pp. 1292–7; ‘The Liberia Steamships’, African Repository, 26, 11, November 1850.

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59 Ibid., vol. 12, 4 December 1848; vol. 13, 28 April 1849.

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63 Central Connecticut State University, Elihu Burritt Letters (CCSU, EBL), Elihu Burritt to ‘Sister’, 8 April 1853; Northend, Elihu Burritt, p. 32; EBJ, vol. 18, 29 June 1853.

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67 ‘The Faneuil Hall meeting’, Daily Evening Transcript (Boston), 22 December 1853, p. 2; ‘Cheap ocean postage’, The Sun (Baltimore), 23 December 1853, p. 1; ‘Memorial adopted at a meeting of the citizens of Boston’, S. Mis. Doc. 9, 33rd Congress, 1st session, 1854. On 13 January 1854, a public meeting in Philadelphia reached similar conclusions: see NARA-I, RG 46, Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, SEN 36A-H3.1, ‘Proceedings of a meeting of citizens of Philad^a’, 18 January 1854.

68 EBJ, vol. 19, 2, 6, and 7 January 1854; NARA-I, RG 46, Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, Ocean Postage, SEN 36A-H3.1, petition in ‘Proceedings of a meeting of citizens of New York held at the Tabernacle in Broadway’, 26 January 1854.

69 Newspapers included The Union and The Intelligencer; EBJ, vol. 19, 20 February–19 May 1854, esp. 1 March 1854.

70 EBJ, vol. 19, 8 March, 9 March, and 1 April 1854; Northend, Elihu Burritt, p. 439. Burritt remained frustrated that Rusk never submitted his completed report: see EBJ, vol. 19, 28 April 1854.

71 EBJ, vol. 19, 16 May 1854.

72 ‘Cheap ocean postage’, Albany Journal, 13 February 1854, p. 2.

73 EBJ, vol. 19, 24 March 1854.

74 Ibid., vol. 19, 14 March 1854; Sumner, Charles, ‘Cheap ocean postage’, in The works of Charles Sumner, Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard, 1875Google Scholar, vol. 3, p. 47; Congressional Globe Appendix, 3 July 1852, p. 825.

75 Despite Burritt's anti-slavery work, trade-minded southern merchants welcomed his postage campaign: see EBJ, vol. 19, 20 May 1854.

76 Ibid., vol. 19, 23 and 24 May 1854.

77 Ibid., vol. 19, 22 May 1854.

78 NARA-I, RG 233, House Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, HR 33A-G16.40, ‘Petition of John G. Whittier and 54 others’, 24 February 1854.

79 NARA-I, RG 46, Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, Ocean Postage, SEN 36A-H3.1, ‘Petition of inhabitants of Oberlin, Ohio’; Lieber in ‘Petition of Citizens of Columbia, S.C.’.

80 See NARA-I, RG 46, Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, SEN 36A-H3.1; RG 233, Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, Ocean Postage, HR 33A-G16.40.

81 Resolutions of the legislature of Maine, in favor of cheap ocean postage, S. Mis. Doc. 58, 33rd Congress, 1st session, 1854; Resolutions of the legislature of Massachusetts in favor of a reduction of the rates of ocean postage, S. Mis. Doc. 76, 32nd Congress, 1st session, 1852; Cheap ocean postage: resolutions of the legislature of New Jersey, on the subject of cheap ocean postage, H. Mis. Doc. 41, 33rd Congress, 1st session, 1854; Cheap ocean postage: resolutions of the legislature of Wisconsin, on the subject of cheap ocean postage, H. Mis. Doc. 62, 33rd Congress, 1st session, 1854; Resolutions of the legislature of California, in relation to cheap ocean postage, S. Mis. Doc. 66, 33rd Congress, 1st session, 1854; Cheap ocean postage: resolutions of the General Assembly of Connecticut, on the subject of cheap ocean postage, H. Mis. Doc. 85, 33rd Congress, 1st session, 1854; Cheap postage: resolutions of the legislature of Rhode Island, in relation to cheap postage, H. Mis. Doc. 5, 33rd Congress, 1st session, 1854; ‘Resolution no. 31: ocean postage’, Acts, resolutions and memorials passed at the regular session of the fifth General Assembly of the state of Iowa, which convened at Iowa City, on the fourth day of December, Anno Domini 1854, Iowa City, IA: D.A. Mahony & J.B. Dorr, 1855, p. 281.

82 Columbia University, Rare Book & Manuscript Library Collections, New York Chamber of Commerce and Industry Records, Box 436, ‘Petition to Congress from Citizens of New York for Postal Reform, May, 1856’; Pierce, Edward L., ed., Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner, Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers, 1893Google Scholar, vol. 3, p. 274.

83 ‘Rates of domestic and foreign postage’, Charleston Courier, 8 September 1865, p. 4; ‘Rates of postage with the United Kingdom’, Providence Evening Press, 30 November 1868, p. 3; Report of the postmaster general, H.ex.doc. 1/4, 42nd Congress, 2nd session, 1871, pp. 11–12; ‘Foreign postal rates’, Macon Weekly Telegraph, 11 January 1876, p. 4; ‘Death of Elihu Burritt’, San Francisco Bulletin, 8 March 1879, p. 2. The establishment of the General Postal Union in fact owed little to Burritt's organizational efforts. His contribution entailed popularizing the idea that cheap, global communication was itself a moral force for peace and prosperity.

84 Report of the secretary of state, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate of February 24, 1855, calling for copies of the correspondence between the United States and Great Britain, relative to the postal treaty with the British government, S. Exdoc. 73, 33rd Congress, 2nd session, 1855.

85 Younger, Edward, John A. Kasson: politics and diplomacy from Lincoln to McKinley, Iowa City, IA: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1955Google Scholar, pp. 39, 49, 141–52; ‘Foreign Intelligence’, The Times (London), 14 May 1863, p. 11. On the 1863 conference, see John, ‘Projecting power overseas’. On postal administrators – heirs to Kasson – building bureaucracies to globalize communications, see Léonard Laborie, ‘Global commerce in small boxes: parcel post, 1878–1913’, in this issue, pp. 235–58.

86 ‘How events in Egypt are playing out online’, 10 February 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/133660816/How-Events-In-Egypt-Are-Playing-Out-Online (consulted 20 March 2015).

87 For the latest scholarship on historicizing the nation-state, see Maier, ‘Leviathan 2.0’.