Mailgate: Trump’s Shadow in the Past

President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the post office to suppress mail voting has sparked widespread outrage and accusations of voter suppression. Critics argue that this move is unprecedented – but only if one ignores a rather sordid chapter in American history.

A century and a half ago, President Andrew Jackson empowered the Postal Service to squelch abolitionist literature sent through the mail. The parallels between then and now are striking. Trump’s claim that mail ballots are a form of election rigging echoes the racist myth that enslaved people were content with their condition and would remain passive unless instigated by Northern abolitionists.

In 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society mailed pamphlets to thousands of civic and religious leaders in Southern states. The postmaster in Charleston, South Carolina, Alfred Huger, seized upon this as an excuse to withhold the mailbags, allowing a mob to burn them in a great bonfire that attracted thousands of spectators.

The Postmaster General at the time, Amos Kendall, was no stranger to partisanship. He had defected from Henry Clay’s Whigs and later joined Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet” as one of his most trusted advisors. When confronted with the situation in Charleston, Kendall chose a creative approach, ruling that abolitionist periodicals should not be delivered while claiming he lacked statutory authority to do so.

Kendall’s decision was consistent with Jackson’s own views on slavery and intimidation. The President had instructed Southern postmasters to record and publicize the names of individual subscribers to abolitionist newspapers, hoping to encourage their neighbors to intimidate them into leaving the South. This campaign of voter suppression continued throughout the antebellum era, with many Southern states passing laws to prohibit the circulation of abolitionist material.

In 1857, Attorney General Caleb Cushing opined that Mississippi law superseded the federal postal statute because it protected against “domestic violence” and allowed for provisions to suppress insurrection. This effectively gave postmasters a free hand to withhold mail they deemed objectionable, setting a precedent that would continue until the Civil War.

The parallels between Trump’s voter-suppression scheme and Jackson’s efforts to manipulate the mail are too striking to ignore. Both rested on fabricated premises – the racist myth that enslaved people were content with their condition in Jackson’s case, and the myth that mail ballots are a form of election rigging in Trump’s. The Supreme Court has the power to terminate Trump’s voter-suppression scheme much sooner than it took to end the Civil War.

The Postal Service is not just an institution – it is also a symbol of American democracy itself. When its integrity is compromised by partisan interference, we risk undermining the very foundations of our republic. The Supreme Court must act swiftly to put a stop to Trump’s voter-suppression scheme before it’s too late. The future of mail voting hangs in the balance, and with it, the future of our democracy.