Historedia
Episode 1 of 2

Congressional Authorization

When
3 March 1847
Where
Congress
Part of
The United States issues its first postage stamps

Congress passed an act on March 3, 1847, authorizing nationwide stamp production.

Congress provided for the issuance of stamps by passing an act on March 3, 1847. The Postmaster-General immediately let a contract to the New York City engraving firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Edson to produce the stamps.

Sources

  1. Postage stamps and postal history of the United States Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-26

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.