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McGuffey Readers became the standardized reading text for most schools across the United States, especially throughout the West and South, during the mid to late nineteenth century,<ref>[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15577 Henry H. Vail, ''A History of the McGuffey Readers'']</ref> <ref>[http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1469 McGuffey's Reader]</ref> and were used widely in America until just after World War I. This resulted in the Readers becoming a unifying force in American culture, giving America a common value-laden body of literary reference and allusion,<ref>Cranney, A. Garr, 'Noah Webster and William Holmes McGuffey: The Men and Their Contributions to Reading''</ref> and “a sense of common experience and of common possession”.<ref>Historian Henry Steele Commager</ref>     

McGuffey Readers became the standardized reading text for most schools across the United States, especially throughout the West and South, during the mid to late nineteenth century,<ref>[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15577 Henry H. Vail, ''A History of the McGuffey Readers'']</ref> <ref>[http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1469 McGuffey's Reader]</ref> and were used widely in America until just after World War I. This resulted in the Readers becoming a unifying force in American culture, giving America a common value-laden body of literary reference and allusion,<ref>Cranney, A. Garr, 'Noah Webster and William Holmes McGuffey: The Men and Their Contributions to Reading''</ref> and “a sense of common experience and of common possession”.<ref>Historian Henry Steele Commager</ref>     

In higher education, the second requirement of [[Harvard]] Universities ''Lawes''  of 1642  (after requiring literacy in Latin, which language the Scriptures were then mostly written in), was that "Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life. (Joh. 17:3) Overall, the nature of early colleges and universities was religious, and which  continued at least until the Civil War. Even State colleges had significant religious (most always Christian) components, such as mandatory religion courses and attendance at chapel services, while large numbers of their faculties had formal religious training. <ref>Ringenberg, 1984; Marsden and Longfield, 1962; Ronald W. Fagan and Raymond G. DeVries, ''The practice of sociology at Christian liberal arts colleges and universities''; The American Sociologist, June, 1994</ref>   

In higher education, the second requirement of [[Harvard]] Universities ''Lawes''  of 1642  (after requiring literacy in Latin, which language the Scriptures were then mostly written in), was that "Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life. (Joh. 17:3) Overall, the nature of early colleges and universities was religious, and which  continued at least until the Civil War. Even State colleges had significant religious (most always Christian) components, such as mandatory religion courses and attendance at chapel services, while large numbers of their faculties had formal religious training. <ref>Ringenberg, 1984; Marsden and Longfield, 1962; Ronald W. Fagan and Raymond G. DeVries, ''The practice of sociology at Christian liberal arts colleges and universities''; The American Sociologist, June, 1994</ref>   

The first elementary schools also taught Christian morality, and even the [[Unitarian]] (a religion which essentially denies Christ and Divine biblical authority, but which then overall upheld Bible morality, much unlike it does today) ''Father of the Common School'', Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 — August 02, 1859), who became Massachusetts Secretary of Education in 1837, not only understood the impossibility of separating education from religious moral beliefs, but held that it was lawful to teach the truths of the general Christian faith, asserting that the “laws of Massachusetts required the teaching of the basic moral doctrines of Christianity.” Mann, who supported prohibition of alcohol and intemperance, slavery and lotteries, <ref>http://www.famousamericans.net/horacemann</ref>  dreaded “intellectual eminence when separated from virtue”, and that education, if taught without moral responsibilities, would produce more evil than it inherited.<ref>William Jeynes, “American educational history: school, society, and the common good,” p. 149, 150 </ref>

By 1820 American publishers had produced almost 300 different editions of the King James Bible, and by 1870 the number had increased to almost 1,900 in the English language alone. By the mid-800'sBiblical literacy so high that, as these historians state,

Authors throughout this period used biblical stories and phraseology as a kind of cultural anchor in their own works. They were able to allude to the biblical narrative—or how that narrative was worded in the King James Version of the Bible—with an un-abashed fluency and confidence. Readers were so familiar with certain biblical stories, characters, and passages that authors could build upon these narratives in their own works without feeling any need to point out the biblical roots of their thinking. Frederick Douglass could write of weeping "near the rivers of Babylon" and Harriet Beecher Stowe could underline the Christlike character of Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by lacing his conversation with unattributed biblical allusions, knowing that their readers would know the parts of the Bible they were so freely referencing.<ref>''The Bible." American History Through Literature,'' Ed. Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert Sattelmeyer. Gale Cengage, 2006. eNotes.com. 2006. 10 Nov, 2010</ref>  

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While iniquity was always a significant part of America, it was generally held as shameful and overall resisted by Church and State.  Early on, in a pamphlet for Europeans titled ''Information to Those Who Would Remove to America'' (1754), Benjamin Franklin wrote, in part:  

While iniquity was always a significant part of America, it was generally held as shameful and overall resisted by Church and State.  Early on, in a pamphlet for Europeans titled ''Information to Those Who Would Remove to America'' (1754), Benjamin Franklin wrote, in part: