Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/131

 United States narrowly as consisting only in "levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort," and they also provided that conviction under a charge of treason could be secured only on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or confession in open court.

This view of the fathers as relates to treason was of course lost sight of during the Civil War, when in the North it used to be fashionable for men to pillory as "fool" or "traitor" (with an emphatic expletive) anyone who had the temerity to vote the Democratic ticket; it was lost sight of in the recent war when men were called traitors because they refused to buy liberty bonds or because they declared the draft a violation of the rights of the individual; and it is likewise lost sight of when we condemn under the term treason opinions on history which we may regard as too favorable to our nation's one-time enemies, or too contemptuous of the characters or the acts of our own distinguished men of a past age. It would be strange if the impulses engendered by the war and the peace were not reflected more or less in editions of books prepared since 1917. It is probably true that some authors have overstressed the "hands across the sea" sentiment, while others perhaps lean unduly in an opposite direction. But that any of them have been guilty of treasonable acts or even intentions is what no one who knows the historical profession can believe without the most explicit proof.

But this question of treason aside, the problem still remains to determine what is the history of our country "in all its original purity." What shall be the test of purity inasmuch as, happily, there is no established list of authorized books or records from which writers must derive their facts? Are they not compelled either to investigate each point for themselves or to accept as probably correct the results of other men's investigations? To be sure, every