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July 26, 1775. In a stately mansion turned rebel headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, George Washington sits down at a dining room table and writes out his orders for the day. The brand-new commander-in-chief has a problem: his army is outfunded, outmanned, and outgunned — and if he can't communicate, he can't win.
What Washington doesn't know is that on this very day, the Congress in Philadelphia is appointing a different kind of general to help him. A postmaster general: Benjamin Franklin. It's a strange homecoming. Franklin spent forty years building the colonial post into a marvel of efficiency… until the Crown humiliated him before the Privy Council and fired him from the job. Now, the rebels are handing it back.
How did a runaway teenage printer end up running the mail for a continent? Why did the Crown fire its best postmaster? And how did a network of post riders help win the Revolutionary War?
Special thanks to USPS Historian Steve Kochersperger, and Smithsonian National Postal Museum curators Dan Piazza and Lynn Heidelbaugh. Dan and Lynn’s new book for the Postal Museum, Routes to a New Nation, will be out in October and is currently available for pre-order.
You can find all the books we’ve used to make recent HISTORY This Week episodes at historythisweekpodcast.com.
CORRECTION from the episode: Steve Kochersperger was not Postmaster General of Philadelphia, but Postmaster of Julian, PA.
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