The Three Cent Letter
Oh, the three-cent letter... I’ve been sending these for a couple of years, and since I like sending them, I’ve been looking for reasons to send them. Letters are suddenly cool! I write to family; my mom, my dad, my sisters—I don’t write to my brothers because sarcasm is hard to convey in written form—but I’ve written to friends, companies, and for a while I was even mailing my paycheck in a three-cent envelope (there were no branches in that town).
I use this old postage mostly across state lines, so all of my letters are of the more expensive three-cent variety, and not the economical two-cent variety (which is strictly for addresses in the same town). Yes, three cents is cheap, but you can send cheaper mail if both addresses are in the same town!
Are you calling shenanigans? Do you think I’m a liar? Are you asking how this can possibly work? Well, let me first tell you how to do this—and then I’ll tell you why it works (I should mention, however, this only works in the several states of America—sorry Candinavians):
To start, write your letter. Tell someone how very much they mean to you. Then, seal it in an envelope. Put (3) one-cent stamps on the upper right hand corner—(2 if they live in town). Write the name and address of whomever you want to send it to on the center of the envelope, in the style they prefer (if you should like to test this out, but can’t think of anyone to send it to, send me a three-cent letter, and I promise to reply in kind (I’ll even send you a special prize!). If you can’t figure this out, send me an email with your physical mailing address, and I’ll send you a three-cent letter just to prove its efficacy (I may even add the prize—if I’m feeling froggy).
Of course, all of this is standard. Now for the tricky parts.
First, the return address is different—so pay attention. In the upper left hand corner, where one writes the sender’s address; write Your Name. Below that, write c/o (which stands for “care of”) followed by your address—but make sure there are NO ABBREVIATIONS. If you live at 1234 North Paper Street, write 1234 North Paper Street, and not 1234 N. Paper St. On the last line, write your city, county, and state. Note that Colorado is Colorado—not CO. Arkansas is Arkansas. Texas is not TX. Follow this style for all the states, just remember, NO ABBREVIATIONS! You get the gist? Now, LEAVE OFF the zip code.
When you are finished, the return address should look a little something like this:
Your Name
c/o 1234 Paper Street
Colorado Springs, El Paso, Colorado
Finally, you have to take it to the post office. Once there, put it in the mail slot marked LETTERS. Do NOT hand it to the clerks. They will stare at you as if you are mad. Do NOT send it from your own house. It must be the LETTER slot at the post office, or the voodoo magic doesn’t work.
So why is this working, you might ask? Is it legal? What is the history behind it?
Well, first I shall answer the easy question… yes, it is legal. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t work. I’m not smart enough to pull one over on the monolithic USPS—but thank you for thinking I might be!
So why does it work? Well… that’s a little more complicated…
Back when inflation was bad, fiat currencies had recently ruined a number of countries, and our new nation was still forming; the post office was created and mandated in the most rigid of codes, to have a two and three-cent fixed charge on letters of half an ounce or less—because inflation bad. This continued unchallenged and unchanged until the Civil War—or War of Northern Aggression—as the defeated like to call it.
But the Civil War didn’t actually change the code. It simply wrote a second code, so a new jurisdiction could sit on top of the first. This new jurisdiction was for Citizens of the United States of America. It is the federal jurisdiction. Before, there were only citizens of the individual states. After the war, DC had its own citizens. This new jurisdiction was put into code with the fourteenth amendment (quoth the 14th: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside [emphasis is mine]). That, ladies and gentlemen, is your dual citizenship. You are born red and blue—and for the US citizen: anything goes.
But for Americans, citizens of the several states, the other half of you (literally, each of you), postage is set in stone. After all, the old republican form of government is guaranteed—even if it is saddled with the new democracy. And the old republic still has two and three-cent letters, while the new democracy was wide open to inflationary rates; and just in time, as the country went to a fiat currency in 1913—and hasn’t looked back. Of course, most of us have only been taught about the new democracy and our US citizenship. Our state citizenship is mostly ignored, and our rights given little more than lip service, because privileges and immunities...
So why doesn’t the new system override the old system, you might ask? Well, it can’t. The Civil War broke the country in a unique and strange way. When the southern states simply stopped appearing at meetings, the federal government could no longer form a quorum: the lowest limit of senators and representatives necessary to do the government’s business. The fourteenth amendment was written as a convenient workaround; as it gave the federal government the power to send representatives to the States, to send back to Washington DC. If the states were unwilling to send their own representatives (and the south was very unwilling), the feds would do that for them. All they had to do was win the war.
And the north did win the war. But there were enough people at that time that recognized the danger of US citizenship, with its privileges and immunities—but no rights to be seen; and so the old republic is still remembered—especially since it is a convenient hangout for those in the know.
What? You didn’t know?
So there it is: the very short version. If you’d like to know more, you’ll have to do your own dredging. I will however, provide a few sites I liked when I was deep-diving this topic. Before you go, I shall warn you, these are murky waters with strange and dangerous vapors. The histories are always tainted with the lens of perception; first by the writer and again by the reader; making every word ever set to paper twice deceptive (including my own—which is why I prefer to write fiction). These are spells, and very powerful ones indeed. Do you not see the spelling? Do you not feel spellbound?
Lastly, despite what anyone might want you to believe, religion and politics are joined at the hips; and again at the lips. Do not pretend otherwise. It’ll make the medicine easier to swallow.
Thank you for your courage.
The sources follow.
-M. Andrew Jones
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