If the outcome of the Sunday mail fight in Congress testified to the existence of a morality polity based in personal liberty, states’ rights, and moral suasion, the Sabbatarians’ crusade, nevertheless, revealed that some Americans doubted that such a moral polity could ensure the moral populace that the nation needed. Two goals of the opponents of the Sunday mail would remain central to the crusade for moral legislation over the next century. First, worried about the religious authority of the state, they wanted it to acknowledge God’s sovereignty and respect God’s laws. Second, they reconceived the federal government’s role in shaping individual behavior; they wanted it to have the power to make people follow God’s law, in so far as possible, that is, to make them behave morally. The goals were intertwined, since a state with religious authority could have the power to regulate morals and a state that encouraged morality had religious authority.

Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865-1920, 12-13.