Excerpt from John Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. 8: History, Politics and Education The facts of American history were very early confounded with the definitions and doctrines of a dogmatic political philosophy. Before our Constitution was three score years Old, it had been associated with a mass of theoretical and fanciful folk lore, ' whose authenticity was more vehemently asserted than were the facts themselves. A body of tradition grew up about the origins of our nationality, and it became the mould in which all conclusions from documentary sources must be cast. This apocryphal element obscured the genuine portions of our history, and became the criterion by which events were judged, instead of remaining an hypothesis which the examination of evidence should justify or destroy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.