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Trump’s favorite president also attacked the Postal Service.
Slate • • nation
Key Points:
- President Donald Trump’s executive order to suppress mail voting echoes a historical precedent set by President Andrew Jackson, who empowered the Postal Service to block abolitionist mail in the 1830s.
- In 1835, Southern postmasters, under Jackson’s direction and with the support of Postmaster General Amos Kendall, withheld abolitionist literature from the mail, leading to violent public burnings of such materials.
- Jackson justified this censorship by promoting the false notion that abolitionist materials incited slave insurrections, a rationale used to intimidate and suppress political opposition in the South.
- This practice of postal censorship of abolitionist content continued for decades, tacitly approved by successive administrations until the Civil War ended such abuses.
- Both Jackson’s and Trump’s actions rely on unfounded claims—Jackson on racist myths about enslaved people, and Trump on baseless allegations of mail-in ballot fraud—to justify restricting mail services for political ends.
