“I know not how long a republican government can flourish among a great people who have not the Bible; the experiment has never been tried, but this I do know: that the existing government of this country never could have had existence but for the Bible. And further, I do, in my conscience, believe that if at every decade of years a copy of the Bible could be found in every family in the land its republican institutions would be perpetuated.“
– William Henry Seward, 1836
