108 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPSThe Revolutionary War demonstrated the need for
an infrastructure that would both stimulate internal
growth and protect against external threats. Among
the first attempts to address these challenges was
the Postal Service Act of 1792, which transformed
the operation and scope of domestic mail. The act
authorized new post offices in the nation’s remote
but growing frontier regions, an acknowledgment
that the mail was a federal obligation that extended
throughout its domain. By launching a commitment
to regular, scheduled delivery, Congress also
endorsed—and even prioritized—public access
to information. Yet this overhaul of the mail was
not prompted or even facilitated by transportation
innovations; mail continued to be delivered on
horseback, with the subsequent introduction of
stagecoaches to accommodate the increasing
volume and weight of newsprint.
The Postal Service Act rapidly expanded the
circulation of mail and made the Post Office the
largest and most important federal agency in the
early republic. In effect, the act created not just an
infrastructure but also a market for information.
This surge of mail turned the Post Office into a hive
of activity from the 1790s to the 1820s, as successive
postmasters worked to create, manage, and above all
coordinate a massive and continuously developing
network of communication. At the center of the
action was Abraham Bradley, Jr., who joined the Post
Office in 1791 as a clerk. With this large map, Bradley
ambitiously set out to visualize the entire postal
operation in both practical and symbolic terms. In
both its general structure and its many details, the
map reflects Bradley’s vision of nationhood.
Some of the map’s specific features reflect
Bradley’s own identity as a staunch Federalist. To
honor the first president, he identified Washington,
D.C. as the national capital, even though the seat of
government would not move south from Philadelphia
for another four years. Bradley also measured
longitude not from Greenwich, England—as was
customary—but from Washington, D.C. His was
among the first American maps to assert this new
prime meridian.FORGING A NATIONAL NETWORK
Abraham Bradley Jr., “A Map of the
United States, Exhibiting the Post-
Roads ...,” 1796
More generally, Bradley’s was the most
comprehensive and detailed map of the nation up to
that point. Issued in two parts, it emphasized post
and stagecoach roads, branch post offices, and ports
of entry. The result was an advertisement for the
mail system itself, with an established north–south
corridor and inroads into western New York, the
hinterlands of Maine and Vermont, and the more
sparsely settled South. While most contemporary
maps focused on towns, boundaries, rivers, and
topography, Bradley omitted these details in order to
foreground the connections between places. This was a
map designed to convey the lived experience of space
rather than just the measure of distance. As shown
on the next page, regions crowded with postal roads
reveal comparatively dense areas of settlement, while
sparsely connected areas reflect smaller populations
with a lower demand for mail delivery.
Among the most notable elements of the map is
the chart of the mail schedule at the far right, and
enlarged on the next page. Here Bradley synthesized
a tremendous amount of information in order to track
the physical path of the post down to the hour. With a
single line, he followed the mail from northern Maine
to Georgia, with branch routes listed at the bottom
of the chart. At a glance, viewers could see the entire
seaboard network in both space and time. Bradley
even differentiated the summer and winter schedules
to allow for changes in weather and navigability.
The very decision to compile and publish such a
schedule implied an assumption of regular service.
And such a schedule could be created only through
a systematic observation of delivery that was then
aggregated and averaged. The chart confidently
assumed a predictable rhythm of information. With
the map and schedule, Bradley announced one of
the largest and earliest commitments of the federal
government, one that American citizens would
quickly come to expect as a basic function of the
state. He continually revised his maps to reflect the
expansion of the network.
The Post Office quietly and continuously
integrated the far-flung reaches of the physical
territory into a coherent national space. As John
Calhoun remarked in a speech in 1817, “the mail
and the press are the nerves of the body politic. By
them, the slightest impression made on the most
remote parts is communicated to the whole system.”
Bradley’s maps both reflected and advanced that
goal, making the United States a nation not just in
name but also in operation.