Money or Nothing: Confederate Postal System Collapse during the Civil War.

The history of postal service during the Civil War is surprisingly underdeveloped, and little is known about the Confederate Post Office Department. It labored under a strict mandate to achieve fiscal self-sufficiency, to which all other service rationales were subordinate. This policy, in conjunction with a multitude of war-related privations, hampered the Department's ability to foster the substantive or reliable circulation of information, complicating the process of democratic nation-building in which postal services have historically played an important role. After examining reports of the Confederate Postmaster General, coverage of postal operations in Southern newspapers, scholarship in state and local historical publications, and the study of philately, the implications of the Confederacy's fixation on the economic performance of its postal service might well serve as a cautionary tale as the practices of modern media policymaking evolve along similar lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]