On this day 250 years ago, the Connecticut Journal published “The PLAN for establishing a New American POST-OFFICE” proposed by the Boston Committee of Correspondence working with William Goddard. The Plan proposed to replace the Royal Post Office with what Goddard called a “Constitutional Post Office” to serve the American Colonies. The Plan proposed to raise funds “for the necessary Defence of Post-Officers and Riders employed in the same” by subscription, and to put the post’s subscribers in charge of its management. A committee of subscribers in each colony would choose postmasters, “regulate the Postage of Letters and
Packets”, including “the Terms on which News-Papers are to be carried”, and oversee the operations of the post offices and post riders. To ensure security from Royal Government scrutiny of the mail, the Plan provided that Post
Office “Regulations shall be printed and set up in each respective Office” and that mail would be kept “under Lock and Key, and liable to the Inspection of no Person but the respective Post-Masters to whom directed.”

The New American (or Constitutional) Post Office would be an institution to serve the interests of the American colonists rather than the Royal Government as with the Royal Post Office. With the subsequent establishment of the Constitutional Post Office, the 13 American Colonies took another step towards Independence from Great Britain.

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23701246?read-now=1&seq=17#page_scan_tab_contents