it said, as forever to debar any other parties to the compact from any question as to the terms upon which we entered the Union. This is Virginia (and United States) history, as it is; but not as Mr. Fiske sees it and teaches it to Virginia children. Even the extreme Federalists supported this view by implication, if not in direct terms. Mr. Madison, on one occasion, replying to Mr. Henry's charge that they were constructing a consolidated government, declares that "the parties to the Constitution are not the people (of the United States) as composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties." Mr. Nicholas uses the words "the condition is part of the compact." At any rate, the resolution which we have quoted (though not from Mr. Fiske's account) passed the Virginia Legislature, and was the law until the 9th of April, 1865.
"With respect to New York, the untrained reader would necessarily infer that the failure of the condition in that State was complete, while from the same Elliot's Debates (volume I., pages 327-329) we find the language scarcely less emphatic than that of the Virginia resolution—to some minds even more emphatic.
We are not ourselves attempting or professing to give that whole story of both sides of the debates which fair history would require. But Mr. Fiske is writing history, or professes to be. Our duty is to inquire whether he has given us such history as should be taught. "We believe and claim that the contrast between his pages and the full records show that he has given but one side, and so has presented a picture unfit to be shown to our schools.
OFFENSIVE DOCTRINE
We return to the most offensive doctrine of the books that we condemn, the charge that the Southern soldier fought for slave property. If this charge be just, let the truth be taught. It is false. The answer to it is on every page of our history, and the books that make the charge should not be used in our schools.
We all remember how many Virginians of 1861, knowing that the bloodthirst of Naseby and Marston Moor was unslaked, yet weary of the blood-feud that had antedated the Revolution; tired of sec--
