History
Some of the earliest official mail were the messages sent by kings, emperors and other rulers. Cursus publicus was an official Roman Empire mail courier (and transportation) system created by Emperor Augustus. Much later, one of the functions of the Thurn-und-Taxis-Post postal system was to carry the mail of Emperor Maximilan I.
Official mail stamps are related to the end of franking privilege that granted certain elected officials of a government the privilege to send mail for free. The person usually signed their name on the mail but it was a highly abused system. In the UK the rules were changed requiring the sender to indicate the date and place of mailing in addition to their signature, but this too was abused and this led, in part, to the introduction of postage stamps.
Most governments use envelopes with an indicia indicating its official status; the United Kingdom's official mail most often shows, O.H.M.S. or On His/Her Majesty's Service, the United States uses the silhouette of an eagle, Ethiopia shows a hand holding a cleft stick with a letter is wedged into it, while Ireland uses a harp.
After the civil war, the United States Post Office Department had a large deficit and according to the Postmaster General's 1869 report 31,933 had the franking privilege at an estimated cost of $5 million, so in 1872 the Republican party included a proposal to eliminate the free frank as part of their election platform. Between 1873 and 1891 there was no free franking in the USA because special official mail stamps had been issued, but by 1891 free franking had been restored.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)