at every considerable hamlet. Even the Ohio Valley did
not lack. Perhaps four and a half million copies a year were issued in
the whole country by 1800. They were admitted now--not so, however,
under the original postal law--as a regular part of the mails, and thus
found their way to nearly all homes. The news which they brought was
often old news, of course, post riders requiring twenty-nine and
one-half hours between Philadelphia and either New York or Baltimore;
but they were read with none the less avidity. Its first mail reached
Buffalo in 1803, on horseback. Mail went thither bi-weekly till 1806,
then weekly. Postal rates were high, ranging for letters from six cents
for thirty miles to twenty-five for four hundred and fifty miles or
over. So late as 1796 New York City received mails from North and from
South, and sent mails in both directions, only twice weekly between
November 1st and May 1st, and but thrice weekly the rest of the year. In
1794 the great cities enjoyed carriers, who got two cents for each
letter delivered. In 1785 there were two dailies, The Pennsylvania
Packet and The New York Advertiser, but, as yet, no Sunday paper
appeared, nor any scientific, religious, or illustrated journal, nor any
devoted to literature or trade. The New York Medical Repository began in
1797, the first scientific periodical in America. In 1801 seventeen
dailies existed. Paper was scarce and high, so that appeals were
published in most of the news sheets imploring people to save their
rags.

[Illustration: Coin.]
Pine Tree Shilling.
"IN MASATHVSET" "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "XII"

[Illustration: Two part mosaic; above, postman on a horse; below, a
moving train grabbing a mailpouch from a post.]
Postal Progress, 1776-1876.

The press was more violently partisan and indecently personal than now.
To oppose the federalist United States Gazette the republican National
Gazette had been started, which, with brilliant meanness, assailed not
only Washington's public acts, but his motives and character. Him, and
still more Adams, Hamilton, and the other leading Federalists, it, in
nearly every issue, charged with conspiracy to found a monarchy.

Republican journals reeked with such doggerel as:

"See Johnny at the helm of State,
Head itching for a crowny;
He longs to be, like Georgy, great,
And pull Tom Jeffer downy."

[Footnote: 2 McMaster, 383]

Federalists were not behind in warfare of this sort. Jef