The post office department and the treasury department of the Confederate States bore the same relation to each other as the corresponding offices in the United States Government. That is, the first auditor of the treasury was charged with the duty of auditing the accounts of the postal service without being subject to the revision of the comptroller of the treasury. He likewise conducted all suits and legal proceedings for the collection of sums due the department, instead of referring such cases to the department of justice as other departments did. 92 This arrangement with the treasury Mr. Reagan thought entirely suitable, and when the work became too heavy for the first auditor, he asked Congress for assistants and clerks for that officer of the treasury. But the relations between the two departments were not always quite amicable, as there were occasional differences of opinion between the postmaster-general and the secretary of the treasury because of Mr. Memminger's instructions to the accounting and disbursing officers. One of these incidents led to a sensational episode, in which threats of criminal prosecution were made before matters were adjusted.
The postmaster-general on June 27, 1863, made a draft on the treasury for ten thousand pounds in the current exchange for specie, the money to be placed on deposit in England to the credit of the department. The treasurer declined to honor the draft on the ground that the department had no specie to its credit, and that the draft should have called for $145,000, which was the currency value of the $50,000 demanded in specie. Reagan in turn declared that he certainly ought to have at least $67,000 of specie in the treasury, because all postage had been paid in coin prior to October 15, 1861, the date on which the first stamps were delivered, and when treasury notes became acceptable for postage stamps. 93 To Memminger's excuse that postal funds had not been kept separate, the postmaster-general replied that they should have been; and he said that if the money were not forthcoming, he would report the treasurer to the President for removal, as having violated the law requiring him to keep the funds separate. When he finally did have to refer the matter to the President, Mr. Reagan concluded his statement of the case by saying:
The Secretary of the Treasury has on other occasions embarrassed the operations of this Department by what seems to me an improper interference in questions relating to its connections with the accounting and disbursing officers; . . . it is important for me to know whether the funds of the Post Office Department are under his or my control. 94
“Attorney-General Watts, to whom President Davis referred the papers, in returning them to the President, said in his report that the brief paragraphs at the end of the letter of the Postmaster-General so aptly stated the law that he copied them in his opinion.” 95 The attorney-general plainly said that the postmaster-general had as full power over the funds belonging to the post office department as the secretary of the treasury had over other public moneys; and that his power to make and enforce all necessary regulations for the collection, safe-keeping, and disbursement of the funds of the post office department, embracing within the scope of such regulations the treasurer and auditor for the post office department, was as full and complete as that of the secretary of the treasury in relation to other public moneys.
Proposing to renew the correspondence, Memminger wrote that he agreed with the attorney-general, but answered Reagan's claims by saying that the amounts deposited in the treasury were not kept separate, and that he could not tell what money had been paid in coin. As for paying creditors in specie, he said the holders of the twenty million dollar loan were then entitled to specie for their notes, but that coin was not to be had. To pay one creditor in coin, then, would be an injustice to others. Moreover, he could not see how the post office department could claim any specie, since, as far back as September 30, 1861, that department's account at the treasury was overdrawn $944.01, and since there had been two deficiency appropriations, for which Congress furnished only treasury notes. The only coin on hand was, he said, from the Bank of Louisiana, and must be accounted for at par. To deliver any of it to the postmaster-general would be to lose to the treasury two-thirds of its value. “Besides all this,” ended Mr. Memminger, “it is believed that there is more urgent need for all this money in other Departments than for the Post-office.” 96
The postmaster-general did not answer the letter from the secretary of the treasury. However, he did call the attention of the treasurer, Edward C. Elmore, to the legal aspects of the situation. 97 First, he said that Secretary Memminger should not have mixed up the moneys, for the law forbade exchange of specie for other funds. In the second place, all deposits of the post office department had been made in coin up to October 16, 1861, and the amounts of such ought to be ascertainable, if the books had been properly kept. He said that it was untrue that “coin and Treasury notes being at par, they were received and paid out as called for without discrimination,” for the post office department had never got specie except on special demand, and had used it only for stationery from Europe. He said the secretary of the treasury was forgetting that under the law, which he had admitted was correctly interpreted by the attorney-general, he was not at liberty to put the coin belonging to the post office department into hotch potch with the funds of the General Treasury, and pay out in its stead . . . other and less valuable funds for it.
To do so would be to subject the treasurer to removal and prosecution. Nor was it unjust, said Mr. Reagan, to pay the postmaster-general in specie when others could not be so paid, for the postmaster-general, so far from being an ordinary creditor, had the same control over post office funds as the secretary of the treasury had over other public moneys. How could he hold over $68,000 in specie belonging to the post office department, and then ask that department to pay over $145,500 for $50,000 in specie, needed to keep the post office going? As for the “deficiencies,” these had been appropriated and provided for before the post office department ever drew a dollar of warrants, because they were provided to fill up estimated deficiencies before a dollar had been spent. The actual money of the first “deficiency” appropriation was paid into the treasury five days before the first warrant was issued. The books of the auditor showed that instead of being overdrawn $944.01 on September 30, 1861, the department had in the treasury and its branches subject to warrant $314,651.89, and ever since, larger sums.
If, as suggested by the Secretary [said Mr. Reagan] the only coin now in the Treasury is that taken from the Bank of Louisiana, then there has been an unlawful use made of the specie belonging to this Department, and it is his duty to replace it out of any other specie in the Treasury.
Resting on the legal right of this Department, it is not necessary that I should raise any question with the Secretary about the propriety of his undertaking to decide on his own authority as to the relative necessities of the different Departments and their right to use the specie in the Treasury.
As to the material facts of this case, there need be no controversy. They can all be settled by the records. The law of the case has already been stated by the Attorney General. And I must say with all due respect, that this seems to me to be simply a contest as to whether the will of the Secretary of the Treasury or the law of the land and the plain rules of right shall prevail. 98
Mr. Reagan says in his Memoirs that he expressed the hope that the treasurer's action “would render it unnecessary for me to report him to the President for removal from office.” And he dismisses the matter thus: “Mr. Elmore said he knew then what to do and paid over the $50,000 in coin.” 99 Apparently nothing could better illustrate the Confederacy's financial demoralization, or the lack of harmony existing in its highest official circles.
When Mr. Reagan took charge of the post office department of the Confederate States he felt that the United States post office was extravagant, and that its extravagance was nowhere more unnecessary than in the amounts it paid to the railroads for transportation. At the rates paid by the old government, the department could never become self-sustaining and at the same time render anything like adequate services. Accordingly, he took the initiative in calling a general convention of railroads of the South to meet at Montgomery in April, 1861. The response was gratifying, and speaks well for the spirit of the day; for all the leading lines of road in the Confederate States, with one or two exceptions, and some of the roads in other States, were represented. It was said that the members of this convention represented 4376 miles of road, and $107,607,000 of capital. Inasmuch as some of the delegates came prepared to continue carrying the mails, whether paid or not, until arrangements could be made, the postmaster-general had no difficulty in getting an agreement by the roads to accept one-half their former compensation, and to submit to a division into three classes as before, with the provision, however, that the roads should no longer continue to deliver the mails from stations to post offices. 100 It was agreed, too, that the postmaster-general should classify the roads after Congress had established a proper basis for such action.
This the Provisional Congress did within a few days (on May 9, 1861). It defined the roads to be placed in Class One as “the great through lines connecting important points and conveying heavy mails.” Class Two was to consist of “completed railroads connecting less important points, but carrying heavy mails for local distribution.” Roads on which less important mails were conveyed, short branch roads, and such unfinished roads as did not carry great mails or connect important points were placed in the third class. For first class roads, Congress authorized $150 per mile to be paid; for the second class, $100; and for the third class, $50; while twenty-five per cent additional was authorized if one-half of the service should be night service. Employees of the department were given the right to free passage on the roads. 101
But the enthusiasm which made possible this arrangement was short-lived. Disillusionment followed fast, and for the rest of the Confederacy's troubled existence the department and the railroads were mutually suspicious. The railroads, even those that entered into contracts, felt that they had been drawn into a hard bargain which continued to grow more irksome with the increasing abnormality of business conditions; and the postmaster-general, believing the arrangement justified, came to regard the railroads as monopolistic corporations quite devoid of reason or patriotism, and ready to mulct the Government of huge sums without having performed proportionate services for them. Inconvenience and irregularity of railroad schedules brought down the wrath of many people on the head of the postal service, which, in turn, endeavored to shift the blame to the railroad service, where, in fact, much of it belonged. By considering specific instances, the views of the postmaster-general as expressed in letters and his official reports, and the views of various people as expressed in the newspapers, the reader will doubtless reach the conclusion that, if each party did not have reason to accuse the other of malicious acts, each at least had ample cause for feeling aggrieved.
In the first place, railroad officials objected to the classification of the roads as made by the postmaster-general. It was one thing to get a convention to agree that there should be three classes, as under the United States Government; it was another to pacify a railroad president who felt that his road had been underclassified. The department patiently and courteously explained the extravagance of the former service, and the present necessity for making expenditures come within the revenues. Yet one is apt to think Mr. Reagan might have been more tactful than when he said: “. . . The railroad companies are, as a general thing, doing a better business than they ever did on account of the war, while all other interests are suffering.” The department announced that it was forced to rely upon the patriotism of railroad officials, and expressed the hope that the roads would consent to a reduction. In case a road failed to fulfill the department's hope, it was asked to inform the postal authorities when it would cease carrying the mails, so that the road might be paid for its services up to that time at the rate originally proposed by the department. This might have been expected to bring the roads to terms, 102 for they hardly dared refuse to carry the mails at all. By November, 1861, only fifteen of the ninety-one railroads in the Confederacy had entered into contracts. The postmaster-general charged the remainder with intending to avoid responsibility and the legitimate control of the department by refusing to enter into contracts, although he admitted that they declared themselves willing to perform the service, “but under some protest . . . generally that they must have higher pay.” In order to coerce the roads, Mr. Reagan ordered no payments made after June 30 to those who refused contracts, on the ground that the law forbade payment until contracts were made. 103
That Mr. Reagan was sorely tried may be seen in this extract from his report for November 27, 1861:
It is proper . . . to say that, even at the reduced rate of compensation allowed to the railroads under the recent act of Congress, they receive a higher rate of compensation than the railroads of any other country for similar service except the railroads of the United States. And that Government has for some years past remonstrated against the extravagance of those rates, and it is reasonable to infer that nothing but the great influence of so many and such powerful monopolies has prevented this wholesome and necessary reform. Their usefulness and importance in the conveyance of the mails, as in the matter of commerce, travel, and the operations of the army, are fully recognized by this Department; and the patriotic and public spirited conduct of a number of them . . . serve to show how wrong those are who disregard all other interests than their own, and make use of their important franchises, granted by the several States for the public good, for the injury of others and the public. . . .
Failure to receive one's mail at the proper time is annoying. When the press of the South had their all-important exchanges delayed, their indignation—if we are to judge from such papers as the Charleston Courier and the Savannah Republican—knew no bounds. The Courier asked why and how the Richmond papers reached Columbia a day before they reached Charleston. The Republican did not hesitate to answer:
In the first place the mails are taking care of themselves, and just go in any direction they take a notion to. The most unmitigated incompetency pervades the whole department. The immediate reason, though, is, they are not distributed before arriving at the point where the roads diverge to Charleston and Augusta. We have no regular way of getting our Richmond mail in Savannah; Charleston is on the direct route, as everybody knows except the postmasters and mail agents, but we get it quite as often via Augusta and a day behind time.
And the Republican, “in behalf of a vast majority of the people,” ends by inviting Mr. Reagan “to give place for some man who understands the business.” A little later, “the mails seem to be in a hopeless state of derangement.” The Republican is “tired of complaining,” and its “patience is exhausted. Nowhere is the irregularity more manifest than on the main line from Richmond south,” where the mail “fails as often as it comes through. This is past endurance, and the fault is obliged to lie at the door of the government officials.” Again the Republican invites the post-master-general to withdraw from official connection with the postal service. 104
There was a lamentable amount of truth in what the Republican said, and Mr. Reagan admitted as much, though he stoutly defended the department's efforts. “The railroad service was designed to be daily, and it was hoped, with proper schedules and speed, this would answer the public wants.” But the department had “encountered innumerable difficulties in trying to get proper schedules adopted,” and had had as much trouble in getting them conformed to, after being adopted, as in getting them adopted in the first place. Moreover, the special agents sent out to investigate the distribution system, had reported “many and great abuses.” “These things, with the ordinary causes of delay and loss of connections, such as running off the track, breaking of bridges, . . .” had made the mail “so irregular, as to make it an accident, now, instead of the rule, to have regular connections between any distant and important points.” Such irregularities the department bad done everything in its power to prevent, and was not responsible for them. Finally, the railroad companies had been “pretty generally notified” that the department would do all it could “by way of fines and deductions for failures, in order to compel regularity of service.” 105 In short, Mr. Reagan absolved the highest officials of the department from blame, and placed it on the railroads.
After having read the postmaster-general's report, the Republican, although it acidly inquired the reason why the mails were just as tardy on the roads making contracts as on those refusing to do so, was somewhat mollified on reflecting that the post office department must be self-sustaining. If the service in vogue, “the worst ... in a quarter of a century,” with its heavy postage rates, was a failure, then the Republican declared “the Constitutional restriction must be abolished and a more enlightened system adopted by Congress.” 106 This really was the only correct solution of a vexing problem, but conjectures are idle as to what might have been done.
Between 1860 and 1862 the railroads in operation in the Confederacy increased.from 7,009 to 8,265 miles. At the date of the postmaster-general's first detailed report there were ninety-one railroads and branches “known to the Department,” and only fifteen of these had entered into contracts for carrying the mails. By February, 1862, Mr. Reagan cheerfully announced the existence of one hundred and nine roads and branches, embracing “nearly all the important railroads in the Confederate States,” of which fifty-five had made contracts. 107 But there is no evidence to show that the service was materially bettered.
On the contrary, the irregularities in the service southward had become so vexing that they were inquired into by Congress. Between February 14 and March 29 there were forty failures to make connections for the mails on the roads between Richmond and Charleston, due either to wrecks, accidents to engines, or heavy loads of soldiers. 108 To the Senate's request for the reason for an habitual delay of the Atlanta mail at Lynchburg of eleven hours down and seven hours up, Mr. Reagan replied that it was due to the refusal of the president of the road to run a night train, which the postmaster-general had no power to compel him to do. He said he had secured promises of better connections, but nothing else. 109
Various efforts [he reported] have been made by the Department to secure more certain connections of the mail trains on the great Southern route between this city [Richmond] and Charleston, Savannah, and Montgomery, by co-operating with the several railroad companies in the adoption of new schedules at a reduced rate of speed, but without success, and the Department is not possessed of the power to make schedules for mail trains upon railroads, without the consent of the companies, so that the evils arising out of the present irregularities in the arrivals and departures of the mails upon that line, must continue to be felt by the public, until the railroad officers can agree to a new schedule that can be run with more certainty than the one now in use.
The only remedy in the power of the department, consisting, as it did, of a rigid imposition of penalties for failure to run in conformity with existing schedules, was ineffective. 110
Incidental troubles in relation to railroads also arose from time to time. General Lee complained of delay and difficulty in communicating with Richmond from the camp near Fredericksburg, and asked for better service. 111 And then the treasurer of the Western and Atlantic Railroad of Georgia withheld postal funds, which he had collected in excess of the amount due the road, on the excuse that part of this excess was due for services rendered the department before July 1, 1861.
Mr. Reagan denied the justice of any such claim, and asked Governor Brown—for the State owned a large part of this road—to induce the treasurer to deliver the money on a second demand. He even hinted, in no uncertain terms, at criminal prosecution of the treasurer under the Georgia law for “ `Theft or Larceny after a trust has been delegated, or a confidence reposed. . . .' ” But Governor Brown, on the contrary, claiming that the Confederate Government owed the State of Georgia over $500,000, instructed the treasurer of the Western and Atlantic not to yield any surplus sums due the post office department. Reagan then wanted to prosecute both the governor and the treasurer of the road under the law named above. The attorney-general thought the governor's excuses only a pretense, but he said it would be necessary to show fraudulent intent; and it was clearly impossible to argue that either the treasurer of the Western and Atlantic or Governor Brown had at any time attempted to disguise his action. The postmaster-general had to be satisfied with having the attorney-general's opinion recorded in his letter book, where it now bears eloquent witness to the timidity of the central government in dealing with the officials of a state. 112
By the end of 1863 most of the railroad companies had made contracts, but some held out in spite of an offer of the maximum compensation for first class roads. While willing to carry the mails for the department, they still refused to come under its limited control. Without contracts the only checks in the power of the department were to withhold payment for services performed without a contract, and, in case of continued refusal, “to withdraw the mails from such roads and endeavor to obtain some other mode of conveyance.” 113 This was actually done in one instance, in which withdrawal of mails from the Virginia Central Railroad cut off a large, thickly settled district from official means of communication with the rest of the world. And though a great outcry was raised against this injustice to the people, the condition had to be endured for nearly a month before a compromise was effected. 114
The only other authority the department ever tried to exercise over mail trains was to require them to conform to schedules, usually arranged in some convention of connecting lines, and agreed to by the roads themselves. Yet such was the provincialism of railroads in those days, that if any road forming a link in a great line had been permitted to carry the mails without having been bound by a contract, the post office department would have had absolutely no power to prevent it from adopting any schedule thought to be best suited to its local business, without regard to effect upon the regularity of the mails on its own lines or those of its connections. 115 However, the checks in the hands of the postmaster-general were insufficient under the circumstances; the roads felt that their pay was quite inadequate at the best; while Mr. Reagan believed the situation due to the lack of patriotism on the part of public carriers who had already waxed fat upon Government patronage. In this, as in most cases, there was much to be said on both sides.
In these days when a great federal parcels post service is actually driving express companies into the hands of receivers, it seems almost incredible that any government monopoly so generally acquiesced in as a postal monopoly should ever have had to complain of competition in its business of carrying letters. But from the very inception of the Confederate postal service, its monopoly rights were violated continually and with impunity by the express companies of the South, the chief offender being that known as the Southern Express Company. 116
The Confederate Congress, in the first set of laws prescribed for the new post office department, endeavored to safeguard it by a clause prohibiting “express and other chartered companies” from carrying any letters unless they were prepaid by being enclosed in a stamped envelope of the Confederacy. A violation of the act was punishable with a five hundred dollar fine. 117 Being reminded that neither stamps nor stamped envelopes of the Confederacy were yet obtainable, Congress renewed and enlarged the act of February 23, giving the express companies greater privileges and at the same time imposing greater restrictions and penalties to prevent violation. It was made “lawful for the Postmaster-General to allow express and other chartered companies to carry letters, and all mail matter of every description, whether the same be enclosed in stamped envelopes or prepaid in stamps, or money.” But the mail matter, with the money collected for postage, was to be turned in to some postmaster to be stamped paid. Cancellation of stamps on letters and packages prepaid was enjoined on the company, “under the penalty of five hundred dollars for each failure.” Matter given the company to mail and not to deliver had to be prepaid at the regular postal rates from the place where the company received it to its destination, the stamps being cancelled at the point of mailing. The same act required each agent of express companies to take oath to comply faithfully with the laws relating to carrying of mail and obliterating postage stamps. 118 In case the postmaster-general should refuse to allow an express company to carry letters, it was probably intended that he should fall back on the old United States laws, which made it an offense, finable at $150 for a private express company to carry mailable material, “except newspapers, pamphlets, magazines and periodicals.” 119
Mr. Reagan quoted these laws fully in his first official complaint against the course being pursued by the Southern Express Company, the only company then known to carry mailable matter. He declared that numerous frauds were being perpetrated by the company's agents upon the revenues of the department. 120 That the frauds, in the aggregate, amounted to a very large sum, was revealed by a special investigation. The express company's renderings to such post offices as those at Savannah, Charleston, Columbia, and Wilmington, had decreased from about $200 each per month to sums ranging from $1.30 to five and ten cents. 121 The postmaster-general ordered prosecutions brought against the company, but it was found that the laws were inadequate. The Southern Express Company was not chartered in every state where it operated; therefore prosecution could not be sustained against it. The only penalty provided was a fine against failure to “obliterate postage stamps” on letters prepaid by stamps; and this was to be assessed against the company itself and not against any person connected with, or employed by it. Accordingly, the postmaster-general refused to allow the Southern Express Company to carry any mailable matter not bearing stamps, 122 and lost no time in recommending an adequate revision of the postal laws on this subject. 123 This recommendation was given by the President to Congress for its “careful attention.” 124 and it resulted in the passage of the act of April 19, 1862.
This act simply struck out of the statutes such parts of the Confederate enactments concerning the carrying of the mails by express companies as had been added to the United States laws on the same subject. That is, nothing but the old prohibitory law of the United States was left in effect. 125 The act explicitly said that the laws repealed had been no more than additions or exceptions to the old law, which had in nowise been abrogated or repealed by them. It was also expressly provided that frauds upon the revenues of the post office department and violations of the laws just repealed might be proceeded against and punished under the laws existing at the time the fraud or violation was committed. It is evident that every effort was made to close all possible loopholes through which the Southern Express Company might endeavor to escape from its legal entanglements. 126
But “neither law nor solemn oaths” could bind the Southern Express Company, which continued to violate the law with “audacious boldness.” Moreover, the postmaster-general, in the spring of 1863, declared that persistent efforts were being made “to get a public opinion in favor of the Southern Express Company . . . and that, too, by unjust comparisons of its facilities and usefulness with those of the Post Office Department.” He was amazed “that they should have the brazen effrontery to provoke such comparisons” in the face of their lawless acts. But the truth seems to be that their services were so desirable that people furnished them large numbers of letters and packages to carry over lines that were also mail routes. It began to be hinted that the Southern Express Company could deliver more quickly than the post office could,—even that the Government had no fundamental right to the postal monopoly. And the postmaster-general was incensed to find that the company had “adopted the subterfuge” of advising that all mail to be carried by them should be marked as though it contained money, the company acting on the supposition that they had the right to carry money packages. Thus the company hoped to accomplish “the double purpose of evading the law, and of extorting a larger price for the conveyance of such letters.” In spite of all this, the attorney-general was reluctant to proceed against the company or any of its employees. He held back because the company was not incorporated, and intimated, so Reagan heard, that the law was unconstitutional. Mr. Reagan found it impossible to understand such an attitude. If the law was defective, he wanted to know it, in order that he might then bring the matter before Congress and have a remedy provided. To this end he ordered a prosecution against the Southern Express Company “in a number of cases where they had been detected in violation of the law”; 127 but the results of these prosecutions do not appear.
Experience showed “that nothing short of the most stringent and thorough legislation, excluding all doubts and guarding against evasion,” would serve to correct the evil. The postmaster-general wanted a law that would provide adequate penalties and punishments for violations of the law. He wanted the law to reach all companies, whether corporate or not, and each of their employees, as well as every person who should patronize, encourage, or assist them in their violation of the law. 128
Impelled by a sense of duty, Reagan had accepted the burdens of an office the prospect of which had already proved too much for two men. Out of almost nothing and within a few weeks, he evolved and carried out a plan for taking over and revising the postal service in the Confederate States. Not only did he have to carry out his plans with a constantly diminishing supply of men and equipment, but he had to content with unsympathetic branches of the government itself. It was with extreme difficulty that he obtained even the rights accorded his department by the letter of the law. It was his disagreeable duty to attempt to discipline railroad companies either by ineffective or inadequate fines, or by temporary suspension of service along certain lines, even though he himself had to bear the brunt of popular criticism for doing so. Because of legal difficulties, he had to sit idly by and watch a greedy express company competing with and actually defrauding the post office department. The people, accumtomed to the extravagant service of the United States, resented any curtailment, no matter how great the economy effected. On the other hand, any extension or improvement, or sometimes the bare retention of existing service for facilitating the official correspondence of army officers, was considered by the Secretary of the Treasury an unjustifiable drain on the public resources. Yet, in spite of all opposition and discouragement, the postmaster general doggedly persevered at his tasks; and while he was husbanding the resources of the crippled department, he was devising ways and means for improving the service, and for making it ultimately far more effective and economical than it had ever been. Reagan had the modern idea, his proposals were sound, and, if they could have been carried out, who can doubt that the post office department would have had much greater chances to attain that degree of efficiency so much desired by its head?
OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS
Confederate States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Exemption of Mail Contractors—Habeas Corpus Proceedings (no date), a pamphlet in the “Confederate Archives,” United States War Department. (C. W. R.)
Correspondence between the President of the Virginia Central Railroad Company and the Postmaster General in relation to Postal Services. Richmond, Va., 1864 (a pamphlet now among the Reagan papers, Texas State Library, Austin, Texas).
in the Texas State Library, Austin, Texas.
Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States, Vols. I-VII. Washington, 1905.
Letter Books, Contract Bureau of the Confederate States Post Office Department, in “Confederate Archives,” United States War Department. (C. W. R.)
Letter Book, Number I, of Governor Vance of North Carolina, “Confederate Archives,” United States War Department. (C. W. R.)
Letter Book Number I of the Postmaster-General of the Confederate States, bearing title page:—“Record of Letters and other communications from the Post Office Department of the Confederate States of America,” photographic copy, incomplete, from the original in the Mss. Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., Texas State Library, Austin, Texas.
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, War of the Rebellion, published under the direction of the War Department of the United States, Washington, 1880-1901.
Reports of the Postmaster-General of the Confederate States, Richmond, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, Reagan Papers, Texas State Library, Austin, Texas.
The Southern Companies (no date or imprint of publication), a pamphlet in the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. (C. W. R.)
The Statutes at Large of the Confederate States of America, edited by James M. Mathews, Richmond, 1862, 1863, 1864.
The Statutes at Large of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, edited by James M. Mathews, Richmond, 1864.
BOOKS
Davis, Jefferson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 2 vols., New York, 1881.
Moore, Frank, The Rebellion Record, 7 vols., New York, 1861-1864.
Reagan, John H., Memoirs, New York and Washington, 1906.
Richardson, James D., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861-1865, published by permission of Congress, 2 vols., Nashville, 1906.
Schwab, John C., The Confederate States of America, New York, 1901.
NEWSPAPERS 130 AND PERIODICALS
Atwood, Albert W., “The Great Express Monopoly,” The American Magazine, LXXI, 427-439.
The Dallas Morning News, Feb. 24, 1899.
McCaleb, Walter F., “The Organization of the Post Office Department of the Confederacy,” American Historical Review, XII, 66-74. New York, 1907.
The Richmond Examiner. The Library of the University of Texas.
The Semi-Weekly Richmond Enquirer (bound up with this are several numbers of the daily Richmond Enquirer). The Library of the University of Texas.
The State Gazette, Austin, Texas. Found in the Texas State Library, Austin, Texas.
The Texas Republican, Marshall, Texas. Found in the Texas State Library, Austin, Texas.
The Tri-Weekly Telegraph, Houston, Texas. Found in the Texas State Library, Austin, Texas.
The Weekly Delta, Jan., 1861-Jan., 1862, New Orleans. Found in the Texas State Library, Austin, Texas.
93. Report, Feb. 28, 1862, p. 10.
94. Letter Book, I, 719-720, 721-722.
95. Quoted from Reagan's Memoirs, 158. The full opinion is quoted in Letter Book, I, 739-743.
96. Letter Book, I, 748-750.
97. Reagan's Memoirs, 159.
98. Letter Book, I, 750-756.
99. Reagan's Memoirs, 159.
100. Report, April 29, 1861, p. 13; Semi-Weekly Richmond Enquirer, April 30, 1861, quoting from the Charleston Courier.
101. Statutes at Large, C. S. A., Acts Prov. Congress, 2d Sess., 105.
102. Reagan to T. C. Perrin, Pres. Greenville and Columbia Railroad, of S. C., Nov. 6, 1861, and Jan. 11, 1862, Letter Book, I, 226, 242; H. St. Geo. Offutt, Chief of Contract Bureau, to Thos. H. Walker, Pres. Ala. and Tenn. Railroad, Selma, Ala., Nov. 16, 1861. Letter Book of C. S. P. O., Contract Bureau (Confederate Archives, U. S. War Dept.), 62-63.
103. Report, Nov. 27, 1861, pp. 13-14.
104. Savannah Republican, Oct. 5, 1861, and Dec. 30, 1861.
105. Report, Nov. 27, 1861, pp. 15-16.
106. Savannah Republican, Jan. 22, 1862.
107. Report, Feb. 28, 1862, pp. 3-4.
108. Reagan to President Davis, April 3, 1862, Letter Book, I, 416, 417.
109. Reagan to A. H. Stephens, Sept. 11, 1862, Ibid., I, 479-480.
110. Report, Jan. 12, 1863, p. 11.
111. Lee to Reagan, Nov. 27, 1862, Off. Rec., Series I, vol. XXI, 1035.
112. Reagan to Gov. Brown, Nov. 7, 1862, Letter Book, I, 511-512; Attorney-General Watts to Reagan, Dec. 12, 1862, Ibid., 712-714.
113. Report, Dec. 7, 1863, p. 11. Cf. Reagan to L. E. Harris, president Richmond and Danville Railroad, Dec. 18, 1862, and March 3, 1863, Letter Book, I, 552-554, 635-638; Reagan to R. R. Cuyler, president Georgia Central, July 7, 1863, Ibid., 722-724.
114. Correspondence between the President of the Virginia Central Railroad Company and the Postmaster General in relation to Postal Services. Richmond, Va., 1864 (a pamphlet now among the Reagan papers, Texas State Library, Austin, Texas); Richmond Examiner, Aug. 19, 1864, Aug. 22, 1864, Daily Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 22, 1864, Sept. 7, 1864.
115. Report, Dec. 7, 1863. Cf. also, Reagan to R. R. Cuyler, president Southern and Western Railroad, Jan. 20, 1862, Letter Book, I, 317-318.
116. “At the outbreak of the Civil War the Adams Express Company turned its routes in the Southern States, in which it had enjoyed a complete monopoly, over to the Adams-Southern Express Company, created by the Georgia courts for the purpose of assuming this business. The property of the association was to be represented by 5,000 shares, of which 558 were then issued. The Adams Express Company has held to the present day a dominant interest in this association, which it created to facilitate busines during the war. After hostilities ceased it resumed some of its Southern routes by agreement with the Adams-Southern Express Company, whose name had meanwhile been changed to the Southern Express Company. The two companies still work in common and use the same wagons and offices in many places.”—Albert W. Atwood in the American Magazine, Feb., 1911, LXXI, 432.
117. Report, Feb. 28, 1862, p. 15; Act of Feb. 23, 1861.
118. Ibid., Act of March 3, 1861.
119. Ibid., U. S. Act of March 3, 1845.
120. Report, Feb. 28, 1862, p. 16.
121. Reagan to President Davis, April 10, 1862, Letter Book, I, 420-422.
122. Report, Feb. 28, 1862, p. 16.
123. Reagan to President Davis, April 10, 1862, Letter Book, I, 420-422.
124. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, I, 211.
125. See above, page 244.
126. Statutes at Large, Acts Prov. Congress, 1st Sess., p. 35.
127. Reagan to Attorney-General Watts, March 28, 1863, Letter Book, I, 666-667; Reagan to I. Henley Smith, March 5, 1863, Ibid., 649-659; Reagan to L. I. Whitefield, Manager Pioneer Express Company, May 14, 1863, Ibid., 704; Report, Nov. 7, 1864, p. 9.
128. Report, Nov. 7, 1864.
129. The initials “C. W. R.” accompanying a citation indicate that the necessary notes on the work cited were made available to the writer through the generosity of Professor Charles W. Ramsdell of the University of Texas, who made them.
130. All the files of the newspapers to which I have had access for the period 1861-1865 are incomplete.
How to cite:
Garrison, L. R., "ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS OF THE CONFEDERATE POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT. II ", Volume 019, Number 3, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 232 - 250. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v019/n3/article_2.html
[Accessed Fri Jul 3 19:17:28 CDT 2009]
