The most important official function of the Cumberland Road was to furnish means of transporting the United States mails. The strongest constitutional argument of its advocates was the need of facilities for transporting troops and mails. The clause in the constitution authorizing the establishment of post roads was interpreted by them to include any measure providing quick and safe transmission of the mails. As has been seen, it was finally considered by many to include building and operating railways with funds appropriated for the Cumberland Road.

The great mails of seventy-five years ago were operated on very much the same principle on which mails are operated today. The Post Office Department at Washington contracted with the great stage lines for the transmission of the mails by yearly contracts, a given number of stages with a given number of horses to be run at given intervals, to stop at certain points, at a fixed yearly compensation, usually determined by the custom of advertising for bids and accepting the lowest offered.

When the system of mailcoach lines reached its highest perfection, the mails were handled as they are today. The great mails that passed over the Cumberland Road were the Great Eastern and the Great Western mails out of St. Louis and Washington. A thousand lesser mail lines connected with the Cumberland Road at every step, principally those from Cincinnati in Ohio, and from Pittsburg in Pennsylvania. There were through and way mails, also mails which carried letters only, newspapers going by separate stage. There was also an “Express Mail” corresponding to the present “fast mail.”

It is probably not realized what rapid time was made by the old-time stage and express mails over the Cumberland Road to the Central West. Even compared with the fast trains of today, the express mails of sixty years ago, when conditions were favorable, made marvelous time. In 1837 the Post Office Department required, in the contract for carrying the Great Western Express Mail from Washington over the Cumberland Road to Columbus and St. Louis, that the following time be made:

At the same time the ordinary mail-coaches, which also served as passenger coaches, made very much slower time:

Cities off the road were reached in the following time from Washington:

The ordinary mail to these points made the following time:

The Post Office Department had given its mail contracts to the steamship lines in the east, when possible, from Boston to Portland and New York to Albany. One mail route to the southern states, however, passed over the Cumberland Road and down to Cincinnati, where it went on to Louisville and the Mississippi ports by packet. The following time was made by this Great Southern Mail from Louisville:

The service rendered to the south and southwest by the Cumberland Road, was not rendered to the northwest, as might have been expected. Chicago and Detroit were difficult to bring into easy communication with the east. Until the railway was completed from Albany to Buffalo, the mails went very slowly to the northwest from New York. The stage line from Buffalo to Cleveland and on west over the terrible Black Swamp road to Detroit was one of the worst in the United States. When lake navigation became closed, communication with northwestern Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and northern Indiana and Illinois was almost cut off. Had the stage route followed that of the buffalo and Indian on the high ground occupied by the Mahoning Indian trail from Pittsburg to Detroit, a far more excellent service might have been at the disposal of the Post Office Department. As it was, stagehorses floundered in the Black Swamp with “mud up to the horses’ bridles,” where a half dozen mails were often congested, and “six horses were barely sufficient to draw a two-wheeled vehicle fifteen miles in three days.”[65]

The old time-tables of the Cumberland Road make an interesting study. One of the first of these published after the great stage lines were in operation over the entire road and the southern branch to Cincinnati, appeared early in the year 1833. By this schedule the Great Eastern Mail left Washington daily at 7 P. M. and Baltimore at 9 P. M. and arrived in Wheeling, on the Ohio River, in fifty-five hours. Leaving Wheeling at 4:30 A. M., it arrived in Columbus at five the morning following, and in Cincinnati at the same hour the next morning, making forty-eight hours from one point on the river to the other, much better time than any packet could make. The Great Western Mail left Cincinnati daily at 2 P. M. and reached Columbus at 1 P. M. on the day following. It left Columbus at 1:30 P. M. and reached Wheeling at 2:30 P. M. the day following, thence Washington in fifty-five hours.[66]

At times the mails on the Cumberland Road were greatly delayed, taxing the patience of the public beyond endurance. The road itself was so well built that rain had little effect upon it as a rule. In fact, delay of the mails was more often due to inefficiency of the Post Office Department, inefficiency of the stage line service, or failure of contractors, than poor roads. Until a bridge was built across the Ohio River at Wheeling, in 1836, mails often became congested, especially when ice was running out. There were frequent derangements of cross and way mails which affected seriously the efficiency of the service. The vast number of connecting mails on the Cumberland Road made regularity in transmission of cross mails confusing, especially if the through mails were at all irregular.

To us living in the present age of telegraphic communication and the ubiquitous daily paper, it may not occur that the mail stages of the old days were the newsboys of the age, and that thousands looked to their coming for the first word of news from distant portions of the land. In times of war or political excitement the express mailstage and its precious load of papers from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, was hailed as the latest editions of our newspapers are today. Thus it must have been that a greater proportion of the population along the Cumberland Road awaited with eager interest the coming of the stage in the old days, than today await the arrival of the long mail trains from the east.

Late in the 30’s and in the 40’s, when the mailstage system reached its highest perfection, the mail and passenger service had been entirely separated, special stages being constructed for hauling the former. As early as 1837 the Post Office Department decreed that the mails, which heretofore had always been held as of secondary consideration compared with passengers, should be carried in specially arranged vehicles, into which the postmaster should put them under lock and key not to be opened until the next post office was reached. These stages were of two kinds, designed to be operated upon routes where the mail ordinarily comprised, respectively, a half and nearly a whole load. In the former, room was left for six passengers, in the latter, for three. Including newspapers with the regular mail, the later stages which ran westward over the Cumberland Road rarely carried passengers. Indeed there was little room for the guards who traveled with the driver to protect the government property. Many old drivers of the “Boston Night Mail,” or the “New York Night Mail,” or “Baltimore Mail,” may yet be found along the old road, who describe the immense loads which they carried westward behind flying steeds. Such a factor in the mailstage business did the newspapers become, that many contractors refused to carry them by express mail, consigning them to the ordinary mails, thereby bringing down upon themselves the frequent savage maledictions of a host of local editors.[67]

Newspapers were, nevertheless, carried by express mailstages as far west as Ohio in 1837, as is proved by a newspaper account of a robbery committed on the Cumberland Road, the robbers holding up an express mailstage and finding nothing in it but newspapers.[68]

The mails on the Cumberland Road were always in danger of being assailed by robbers, especially on the mountainous portions of the road at night. Though by dint of lash and ready revolver the doughty drivers usually came off safely with their charge.