We wish those who celebrate a belated merry Christmas, an ongoing happy Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, and, of course, a joyous new year! Furthermore, why not a grievous Festivus? Seinfeld introduced that made-up holiday to television audiences in 1997, but we’ve encountered the word in the nineteenth-century press. The New York Herald of August 2, 1867, announced a “Festivus Tournament” at the Bowery Theatre. The paper didn’t give details, so I can’t confirm whether it involved sharing of grievances and feats of strength.
As we celebrate and look forward, this seems a good time to relate one of the more humorous tales from Zachary Taylor’s political life. It comes from the presidential election of 1848. Because it revolves around developments in mail delivery, I’ll begin with some background on how the post office worked back then.
Postal service in the United States stretches back to the nation’s earliest days. The Second Continental Congress, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution all authorized it. But postage stamps are newer. None existed before the 1840s. In the first seven decades, Americans paid to receive rather than to send mail. They went to local post offices, collected letters addressed to them, and paid associated costs. Those costs varied according to origin, destination, and size. (Certain government officers, including members of Congress and the president, received mail for free—a privilege known as franking.) Writers did have the option of prepaying postage at the post office, saving recipients the money, but they rarely exercised it.
For those of us studying history through presidential letters, that old system is a boon. Because Americans didn’t need to pay for stamps, they could more affordably write to the president. Many people with limited resources wrote to the White House about their lives and the state of the nation. Had doing so cost money, some probably would not have.
St. Louis postmaster’s provisional, 1845. National Postal Museum.
In 1845, the system started to change. First, President John Tyler signed a law simplifying postage rates. Second, Postmaster General Cave Johnson authorized local postmasters to issue adhesive stamps. His action came five years after the introduction of stamps in the United Kingdom. Cities including New York City and St. Louis began printing these “postmasters’ provisionals,” making it easier for letter writers to prepay postage. The vast majority of communities, however, continued to rely on postpayment or special arrangements for prepayment at the local office.
Proof of 1847 US stamps. National Postal Museum.
Two years later, on March 3, 1847, President James K. Polk signed a law authorizing the federal government to print stamps. This law opened to all Americans the modern way of sending mail. The Post Office Department introduced two stamps, one worth five cents with Benjamin Franklin’s image and one worth ten with George Washington’s. (Officeholders’ franking privilege came to mean sending, rather than receiving, mail for free.) Even so, the law did not require correspondents to use the stamps. They still could choose between affixing those or leaving letters’ recipients responsible for the postage. Sending mail postage-due, not postage-paid, remained the more common practice. Not until 1855 did Congress mandate prepayment.
As postage stamps appeared on the scene, so did presidential candidate Zachary Taylor. In 1847, while he won battles in the Mexican-American War, supporters began promoting him as Polk’s successor. Many wrote to him expressing their support and urging him to run. After he returned in December from Mexico to his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, stacks of letters about his electoral prospects began arriving there. In his own letters he often repeated his reluctance to serve in Washington, but he allowed allies to introduce his name at the Whig National Convention in Philadelphia.
On June 9, 1848, the convention nominated Taylor as president of the United States. The convention’s president, John M. Morehead, wrote to him the next day announcing his nomination and requesting his acceptance.
Taylor did not respond.
Morehead waited a week. Then another. Then most of another. But no word came from the presidential nominee. So, on June 28, Morehead wrote another letter. He enclosed a copy of his first.
Taylor had learned of his nomination, but not from Morehead’s letter. Telegraph wires, unknown in the United States five years earlier but rapidly laid down since, carried the news to Memphis. From there, a steamboat—named, of all things, the General Taylor—brought the news down the Mississippi River to its namesake’s Cypress Grove Plantation. The crew fired guns, and the passengers shouted congratulations to the nominee when they spotted him. Taylor, according to a biographer, displayed no emotion. He noted in some private letters that he had heard the news. But, he added, he was still waiting for an official notification.
What had happened to the letter? Well, Morehead had sent it the old way: postage-due. So, throughout the spring, had many of those writing unofficial letters of support to Taylor. When he went to the Baton Rouge post office and saw the volume of his postage-due mail, he decided not to pay for it all. He glanced through the letters, accepted those whose handwriting or senders’ names he recognized, and refused receipt of the rest. The refused letters totaled forty-eight from April to June. They included Morehead’s announcement of Taylor’s nomination for the presidency. The local postmaster sent it, along with the other forty-seven, to Washington for deposit in the dead letter office.
Taylor soon heard what had happened. He requested the letters’ return, and the Baton Rouge postmaster relayed that request to Washington on July 8. The Post Office Department sent them back on July 22. But before they arrived (if they ever did—we haven’t found the original Morehead letter), Morehead’s second letter with the enclosed copy of the first one did (they’re now in the University of Kentucky’s Zachary Taylor Collection). Perhaps guessing what had gone wrong, he had paid the postage on that one. Apparently not having an adhesive stamp available, he’d had a postal employee stamp it in ink. Finally getting the official notification of his nomination on July 14, Taylor responded, accepting it, the next day.
Newspapers around the country reported the mishap. Whig papers either blamed the post office for the letter’s delay, before learning otherwise, or praised Taylor for his thrift and priorities. According to the Plaquemine (LA) Southern Sentinel of August 10, he had chosen wisely to spend his money on “objects of charity . . . more deserving” than unpaid letters from people he didn’t know. Democratic papers portrayed him instead as a miser. The Washington Daily Union, the Democratic Party’s chief organ, issued regular reports on the developing story of the missing missive. After learning why Taylor had not received it promptly, the Union on July 25 charged him with “miserable petty economy” in not “taking all his letters.”
After the delay and drama, Taylor had gotten Morehead’s letter. We are as yet unsure of the other forty-seven letters’ fate. Taylor formally accepted his nomination for the presidency, journalists turned the incident to partisan purposes, and the campaign carried on. The story, if nothing else, highlights the value of that invention of the 1840s, the postage stamp.
Before I close this post and this year, I want to highlight some project news. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission and The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation recently awarded generous grants to American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies to support our work in 2025–26. We are deeply grateful to the NHPRC and the Delmas Foundation, both of them multiyear supporters, for their commitment to expanding access to historical documents. The NHPRC award of $124,097, the largest grant ever made for our project, is one of many awards announced in a National Archives press release and the latest NHPRC newsletter.
Oh, one more thing! The Taylor-Fillmore project is now on LinkedIn. We’re sharing project updates, nineteenth-century tidbits, and news from others who edit and publish historical documents. If you’re on the site, please consider following @taylorandfillmore.
