concluded that no conspiracy for overturning the Government and "no
enlisting of men to effect it, would be an actual levying of war."[728]

The Burr Trial

Not long afterward the Chief Justice went to Richmond to preside over
the trial of Burr himself. His ruling[729] denying a motion to introduce
certain collateral evidence bearing on Burr's activities is significant
both for rendering the latter's acquittal inevitable and for the
qualifications and exceptions made to the Bollman decision. In brief
this ruling held that Burr, who had not been present at the assemblage
on Blennerhassett's Island, could be convicted of advising or procuring
a levying of war, only upon the testimony of two witnesses to his having
procured the assemblage. This operation having been covert, such
testimony was naturally unobtainable. The net effect of Marshall's
pronouncements was to make it extremely difficult to convict one of
levying war against the United States short of the conduct of or
personal participation in actual hostilities.[730]

AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY; THE CRAMER CASE

Since the Bollman case only three treason cases have ever reached the
Supreme Court, all of them outgrowths of World War II and all charging
adherence to enemies of the United States and giving them aid and
comfort. In the first of these, Cramer _v._ United States,[731] the
issue was whether the "overt act" had to be "openly manifest treason" or
if it was enough if, when supported by other proper evidence, it showed
the required treasonable intention.[732] The Court in a five-to-four
opinion by Justice Jackson in effect took the former view holding that
"the two-witness principle" interdicted "imputation of _incriminating
acts_ to the accused by circumstantial evidence or by the testimony of a
single witness,"[733] even though the single witness in question was the
accused himself. "Every act, movement, deed, and word of the defendant
charged to constitute treason must be supported by the testimony of two
witnesses,"[734] Justice Jackson asserted. Justice Douglas in a dissent,
in which Chief Justice Stone and Justices Black and Reed concurred,
contended that Cramer's treasonable intention was sufficiently shown by
overt acts as attested to by two witnesses each, plus statements made by
Cramer on the witness stand.

THE HAUPT CASE

The Supreme Court sustained a conviction of treason, for the first time
in its history in 1947 in Haupt _v._ Unit