The American Letter Mail Company was started by Lysander Spooner in 1844, competing against the legal monopoly of the United States Post Office (USPO, now the USPS).

He further stated, "The Company design also (if sustained by the public) thoroughly to agitate the question, and test the constitutional right of free competition in the business of carrying letters.

Spooner's intentions were founded on both an ethical perspective, as he considered government monopoly to be an immoral restriction, and an economic analysis, as he believed that five cents were sufficient to send mail throughout the country.

The federal government treated this as a criminal act: United States v. John C. Gilmore—This was action instituted by the Government of the United States, to recover the sum of $50 for an alleged violation of the laws regulating the Post Office Department, embodied in the act of Congress of 1825...[5] Calvin Case, another of the persons alleged to be in the office, or connected with "Postmaster General Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company," was arrested and held to bail in the sum of $100, by the United States Marshal, in [Philadelphia], on Friday, on the ground of conveying letters contrary to the laws of Congress.

[6] Although the business was forced by the U.S. Government to close shop after only a few years, it succeeded in temporarily driving down the cost of government-delivered mail.