Daily printout: July 21

The Postal Service is reminding employees that federal ethics laws prohibit them from misusing their postal positions for their own private gain.

This includes personal fundraising in which their social media post or webpage references their USPS position, shows them in uniform, contains a postal logo or vehicle, or otherwise communicates an association with the Postal Service.

If another person starts a fundraising post on an employee’s behalf and references the Postal Service, the employee must ask the person to remove all such references immediately and return any money already raised. Failing to do so is a misuse of a Postal Service position, and it constitutes the acceptance of improper gifts.

Employees can solicit financial assistance on websites such as GoFundMe when off duty and using personal electronic devices, but they cannot associate themselves or their fundraising efforts with the Postal Service.

Employees with questions can email the USPS Ethics Office or call 202-268-6346. The Ethics Blue page has more information.

An article examining the life of Nathan Kelsey Hall, who served as postmaster general from 1850-1852, was recently added to the postal history section on usps.com.

It was written by USPS Historian Stephen Kochersperger and Senior Research Analyst Junemarie Brandt.

Hall was born in 1810 in the Finger Lakes region of New York. He eschewed the family leathermaking business for the study of law.

In 1826, he was hired as a clerk by a young Buffalo attorney named Millard Fillmore. Hall married Emily Paine in 1832, was admitted to the bar in 1833 and became a partner in Fillmore’s law practice. The two eventually left their legal partnership for public service.

Fast-forward 24 years and Fillmore, who assumed the U.S. presidency after the death of Zachary Taylor, tapped Hall to be postmaster general.

The United States had acquired more than a million square miles of land in 1848 following the Mexican-American War. This, along with the Gold Rush, greatly complicated the job of postmaster general.

One of Hall’s early moves was to lower the price of domestic postage. “It is believed [the diminution of department revenues] has been slight in comparison with the public benefits which have followed,” he said.

However, he pushed for much higher rates to the Pacific Coast — close to the actual cost before the transcontinental railroad was built — but Congress granted only a fraction of his request.

His integrity “was almost of a romantic type,” the article quotes Hall biographer James O. Putnam as saying. He railed against the abuse of franking privileges, called for tougher penalties for equipment theft, and “never knew any difference between friends and foes” in awarding contracts.

Fillmore was not chosen to run again on the Whig Party ticket and offered Hall the position of U.S. judge for the Western District of New York. Hall accepted the judgeship, which he held until his death on March 2, 1874.

Six days later, Fillmore died. They are buried next to each other in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery.

In addition to Hall, biographies of former postmasters general Francis Grainger, Charles Wickliffe, Cave Johnson and Jacob Collamer have been added to usps.com recently.

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