L[ydia] Maria Child ALS to W[illiam] P[arker] Cutler, July 10, 1862

principles is in fact a denial of God, however loud
theological professions may be. And there is nothing fills
me with so much anxiety for the future of my beloved
country, as the obvious fact that the people generally
have not a vital belief in God. This they unconsciously
but continually betray by their fear of trusting to principles.
They are prone to place their trust in some statesman, who
has acquired a reputation for skill in "circumventing God."
Look at the course of our politicians with regard to Slavery!
Has it not been thoroughly atheistic? I think one reason
of this diseased state of the public mind is that our govern-
ment started with enacting a lie, and its practice has ever
since been false to its professions. This has educated the
popular conscience with more subtility and pervasiveness
than our literature or our preaching; and the literature
and the preaching were full of the same infection. The
incidental household remarks, which children habitually
hear, educate them far more than school-books or catechisms,
and the same rule holds good with nations. Nearly all
the moral and political teachers of this nation have
agreed in asserting and re-asserting that it was a duty
to sustain what was morally wrong, because it was
legalized. There has been a perpetual conflict between
the moral convictions of the people and what they were