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BookReviews 189 Positivist Republic is best suited for scholars well-versed in American liberalism and/or Comtean thought, and for intellectual historians interested m a view of how Comte's ideas influenced this set of Gilded Age American thinkers. A textbook, or a book for general interest, it is not. Readers need to bring with them a familiarity with a great deal of material-including the thought of August Comte-if they are to glean a great deal from this detailed, highly focused, and original work. K,1re11 Hall U111uersity al Calgary Richard R. John. Spreading the News: The American Postal System /i-om Franklin to Morse. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Pp. xii + 369. Richard R. John provides an insightful cultural history of the often-overlooked American postal system, concentrating on its preeminent status for long-distance communication between its birth in 1775 and the commercialization of the electric telegraph in 1844. Enlarging upon Wayne E. Fuller's excellent historical survey, The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life (The University of Chicago Press, 1972), John effectively draws upon government documents, newspapers, travelogues, and contemporary social and political histories to argue that the postal system causes and mirrors dramatic changes in American public life during this period. Contending that many of the disputes about the limitations and powers of the federal government in private life occur within the postal department, John successfully connects institutional policies and political history to religious and social phenomena, demonstrating that the postal department plays a powerful part in forming the cultural climate of a nation. In the first three chapters, John clearly explains the growth and workings of the postal system during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, accurately outlining its transformation from a British imitation to an uniquely American institution. First, John describes the postal department during the first half of the nineteenth century by explaining quantitative and qualitative statistics, along with anecdotal evidence, that relate it to a growing sense of national identity. John argues in the second chapter that the Post Office Act of 1792-which established the economically favourable admission of news- 190 Canadian Review of American Stu.dies papers in the mail, the inviolability of the mail, and the congressional power to create postal roads-inaugurates the post office as an American institution. Elaborating upon the administrative growth of the post office in the third chapter, John focuses upon the career of John McLean, the postmaster general from 1823 to 1829. John considers not only the administrative and policy development of the postal system in political life, but also its influence in the public sphere. In the fourth chapter, he asserts that postal regulations and standards-including the employees, the work policies, and the buildings-affected and reflected the American culture. As he makes clear, postmasters wielded a great deal of economic, social, and political clout in their communities. Including brief vignettes of postmasters in different communities, John points out the class bias in the appointments as well as the general exclusion of women and free African Americans. Considering the role of the post in literary communication , John institutionalizes nineteenth-century letters by describing the movement , substance, and prohibitive cost enforced until the reduction of rates in 1845 and 1851. The post offices themselves acquired the character of the community because of their power to bring people together for informal meetings to pick up the mail. This intriguing interdisciplinary discussion is backed up by descriptions of pictures (no illustrations), contemporary newspaper and magazine articles, official documents, correspondence, statistics, and short stories. The remaining three chapters centre on different crises and controversies that further define the postal institution and the federal government's development and shifting position in the lives of the people. John focuses on the Sabbatarians's opposition, particularly in the 18 lOs and 1820s, against mail delivery on the Sabbath, a conflict between individual religious spirit and the mechanisms of the federal government. The sixth chapter is concerned with Andrew Jackson's presidential reign, during which the replacement of McLean with the inept William Barry and the resulting large-scale dismissal of postmasters, who were then replaced by Jacksonians, transformed the postal system into a "wellspring of the...

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