United States
In the United States, colonial post roads developed as the primary method of transporting information across the original thirteen colonies. Post riders rode horses between towns on the road and milestones marked the distance between cities. Many of these milestones still exist on older highways such as the Boston Post Road. Before the advent of electronic communication, post roads were crucial in spreading news and knowledge across the colonies.
The Articles of Confederation authorized the national government to create post offices but not post roads. Adoption of the U.S. Constitution changed this, as Article I, Section Eight, known as the Postal Clause, specifically authorizes Congress the enumerated power "to establish post offices and post roads." The U.S. Supreme Court later interpreted this clause to allow the creation of postal roads that were used for other concurrent purposes. A law of 1838 designated all existing and future railroads as post roads.
Notable American post roads built for the purpose include:
- Albany Post Road, connects New York City to Albany, the capital of New York state
- Boston Post Road, traverses New England from New York to Boston
Read more about this topic: Post Road
Famous quotes related to united states:
“Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“In the United States there is more space where nobody is is than where anybody is.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,—never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)