Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The churches of the American republic stepped into the breach left by the states. One of their educational initiatives, the Sunday school, provided one day a week of instruction in basic literacy for 200,000 American children by 1827. Only after public primary education became more widespread did Sunday schools concentrate exclusively on religious instruction. As Yankees moved from New England into the Old Northwest, they replicated the publicly funded weekday primary schools with which they had been familiar. This project could be seen as hastening Christ's Second Coming. The Connecticut state legislature issued a remarkable exhortation promising westward migrants who established schools a celestial reward. 'How great will be your happiness,' it assured them, 'to look down from heaven' in future centuries and behold your 'enlightened and pious and happy' descendants, living under 'the mild reign of the PRINCE of peace,' who will have returned and established his thousand-year kingdom." [Howe: What Hath God Wrought, p. 449-50]