Throughline Signed, Sealed & Delivered | America in Pursuit
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Jan 27, 2026 
Winifred Gallagher, journalist and author who explores how institutions shape society, discusses the postal service as the colonies' communications backbone. She traces Benjamin Franklin’s role in linking the colonies. She covers postal policies that subsidized newspapers, spurred transportation and book circulation, and created an informal national education network.
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Long Commutes Sparked Postal Insight
- Winifred Gallagher spent 15 years commuting between New York City and Du Bois, Wyoming and thought about what linked the country.
- That repeated travel led her to conclude the post office was the connective tissue between regions.
Post Office As Founding Infrastructure
- Benjamin Franklin built the post into America's institutional DNA and used it to bind the colonies together.
- Early postal networks became the first infrastructure of the United States government and politics.
Secret Networks Launched The Republic
- Revolutionary groups used underground communications like Committees of Correspondence and the Constitutional Post to organize under British surveillance.
- The first U.S. government functions emerged from those same communication networks.
