Therefore the foundation has significantly crumbled.

James Fenimore Cooper on Christianity as the basis of virtuous families and the well-ordered republic:

"Cooper sees religion and the virtues that it fosters as vital to the republic. In discussing private as opposed to public duties, he links the family to religion, specifically scriptural religion, thereby pointing beyond politics to America's deepest cultural foundations. He interprets the Fifth Commandment as encompassing "the entire extent of the family relations... since it cannot be supposed that those who precede our immediate parents, are excluded from the general deference that we owe to... our predecessors." It is in this section that he mentions the only two persons named in the book. He says that "from the Saviour through the greatest of his apostles down" have come teachings on the duties of private station, the duties and obligations of human relationships, which may include non-familial relationships such as master and servant but are principally and most significantly those of family. Saint Paul is quoted to indicate that, while duties are imposed on both husband and wife in the marital relationship, the wife has a special "obligation of deference." Scripture, therefore, points to the truth that family bonds are stronger than those suggested by cool Lockean calculation. American society is composed not simply of individuals who possess rights, but of men, women, and children who are connected across generations by ties of love, duty, and a common religious heritage. The emphasis here is not on rights but duties, not on equality but subordination. Cooper shows that he regards Americans as a Bible-reading and scripturally faithful people, and sees this as one of their most profound strengths.

Another reason for the key role Cooper assigns to federalism becomes evident from his association of the family with religion. In Cooper's time virtually all laws that dealt with family relationships were under the jurisdiction of state governments. As mentioned above, state laws and institutions were not simply reflections of the national Constitution. Local law governing the family in the early republic was to a large extent the common law, which spoke not only of rights but of duties, such as the duty of parents to support their children and children their parents, and the duty of grandparents to support their grandchildren and grandchildren their grandparents, and states could be found declaring such duties to be based on "the law of morality." This was not the language of liberal individualism. Cooper believes that to understand the bases of authority in the republic one must understand more than philosophy, whether ancient or modern. Stable religious families constitute a foundation of society. Children are raised in them who become those kinds of men and women without whom a decent society cannot be sustained."

—Grant Morrison, "James Fenimore Cooper and American Republicanism," Modern Age, Spring 1992.