The post office was an instrument of political control in early America

Evidence

The post office became an object of intense political interest and after 1825 a federal postal department was separated from the revenue system and made independent. — Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, 964

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Innis’s core thesis that communication infrastructure (here the postal system after 1825) constitutes political possibility, and prefigures contemporary platform studies on how infrastructure shapes discourse. — connects to: In colonial America, the right to petition required governmental hearing and response. — A Short History of the Right To Petition Government for the Redress …
• SEED: Angle: the American postal network as an 1820s analog of today’s internet backbone — infrastructure politically constituted and contested.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, 964