No Pension for Deserters

[Draggingtree]

No Pension for Deserters

 

 

 

While a North Carolina State Legislator in 1902, Locke Craig debated North Carolina’s Republican US Senator Jeter Pritchard at Charlotte and denounced the Republican practice of rewarding those who had committed treason against North Carolina during its struggle for political independence.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide 

No Pension for Deserters

“[The Republicans complain that] two hundred thousand dollars went to pension the Confederate soldiers. We will take care of these old veterans, we owe them a debt of gratitude. In the wreck and ruin of war we were rich in the priceless heritage of their memory.

“These were men whom death could not terrify, whom defeat could not dishonor.” They glorified the fallen cause by the simple manhood of their lives and by the heroism of their death. They have cast over the South the glamour or an immortal chivalry and consecrated the cause of Dixie with the blood of an immortal sacrifice. It was devotion like this that made the South, though torn and bleeding, beautiful and splendid in her desolation, and in her woe.