CHAPTER III:

The Post and Newspaper in British America: A Communication System in Crisis

This chapter explores how the newspaper and the post, both separately and together, became mediators of the American Crisis. Considered together, the post and newspapers of British America had the coherent character of a system: their many parts (postal offices, deputies, postal riders, protocols, newspaper printers, presses, subscribers, etc.) were linked together and contributed to a whole. Since the post was a public system, through which the letter writer could address anyone, at periodic intervals, with dispatch and privacy, it was available to challenge as well as support the empire. Because the newspapers of British America were run for profit by a dispersed group of talented craftsmen, and because government efforts to prosecute newspapers for seditious libel failed, the newspapers were constituents of a communication system that no one controlled. The second half of this chapter shows how a communication system that was developed and improved to support empire, was repurposed to subvert it.