"A major evangelical Christian concern during the 1830s was the preservation of the Christian Sabbath as a day of rest. In 1810, Congress had enacted legislation that required post offices to remain open all seven days of the week. In 1828 evangelicals established the general Union for Promoting the Observance of the Christian Sabbath to oppose this policy. One point of contention was that the federal government, by requiring the mails to run on Sunday, had overruled the state and local ordinances against breaking the Sabbath. In addition, those opposed to the Sunday mails argued that the federal government was violating the right of conscience by requiring employees to choose between keeping their jobs with the post office by working on Sundays and thus violating their conscience or observing the Sabbath according to their own religious beliefs, thereby risking the loss of their jobs. Therefore, the group argued, the First Amendment protection of free religious practice required the federal government to cease Sunday mail delivery. Supporting the compelling state interest standard, evangelicals argued that the government should refrain from limiting th free exercise of religion in the absence of an overriding reason to o otherwise. Those supporting the Sunday mails publicly accused their opponents of attempting to impair republican government and of restricting religious liberty by imposing a particular day of the week on all citizens as an official day of rest (West 1996, 157). Although the attempt to stop the Sunday mails failed, by the 1840s, many Sunday mail routes had been terminated anyway ue to improved systems of communication and transportation."