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President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the post office to suppress mail voting has often been called “unprecedented.” That is not quite right. An earlier president—in fact, one of Trump’s role models—also empowered the Postal Service to squelch political opposition. It was one of the most disreputable episodes in U.S. history, and Trump has attempted to revive it with a modern twist.

In the summer of 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society began mailing a pamphlet titled Human Rights, along with other literature, to thousands of civic and religious leaders in Southern states, hoping to convince readers of the immorality of slavery.

Things did not go as planned. That July, a shipment that included Human Rights, the Emancipator, and a children’s magazine called the Slave’s Friend arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. The local postmaster, a Jacksonian Democrat named Alfred Huger, was unnerved by what he considered inflammatory content and sequestered the abolitionist material, rather than comply with his legal obligation to deliver the mail.

That evening, a mob of so-called lynch men broke into the warehouse and removed the mailbags, which they soon consigned to a great bonfire that attracted thousands of........

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