The Post Office Department (1792–1971) was the name of the United States Postal Service prior to it being a Cabinet department, and during the time that it was at cabinet-level, officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the Postmaster General.
The Postal Service Act signed by President George Washington on February 20, 1792, established the Department. Postmaster General John McLean was the first to call it the Post Office Department rather than just the "Post Office." The organization received a boost in prestige when President Andrew Jackson invited his Postmaster General, William T. Barry, to sit as a member of the Cabinet in 1829. The Post Office Act of 1872 (17 Stat. 283) elevated the Post Office Department to Cabinet status.
During the Civil War (1861–65), postal services in the Confederacy were provided by the CSA Post Office Department, headed by Postmaster General John Henninger Reagan.
The Postal Reorganization Act was signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970. It replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with the independent Postal Service on July 1, 1971.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, post, office and/or department:
“God knows that any man who would seek the presidency of the United States is a fool for his pains. The burden is all but intolerable, and the things that I have to do are just as much as the human spirit can carry.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—”indoctrination” we might say—exercised through the mass media.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Institutions of higher education in the United States are products of Western society in which masculine values like an orientation toward achievement and objectivity are valued over cooperation, connectedness and subjectivity.”
—Yolanda Moses (b. 1946)
“I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,
Those undreamt accidents that have made me
Seeing that Fame has perished this long while,
Being but a part of ancient ceremony
Notorious, till all my priceless things
Are but a post the passing dogs defile.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)