Between 1840, when chapters five, six, and seven leave off, and 1848, when Horace Mann left his position as secretary of the board of education, the religious consensus that had helped to give rise to the Common School Awakening definitively broke down. By the end of the decade, American Christians of all stripes were issuing objections to common schools. Lutherans, Reformed Christians, and members of other confessions joined the Catholics who had first voiced opposition to the vision of Christianity without sectarianism that stood at the heart of the Common School Awakening. As a result, the dramatic reform of the 1830s came to a halt, occasionally even retreating. But whatever regression might have occurred in terms of short-term policy, the religiously motivated ideals of systematization and professionalization had been permanently enshrined in the American vision of public education. Once stirred from her slumbers, American public education would not go quietly back to sleep.