The National tribune., 1882-12-07
SOLDIERS LETTERS,
Some Very Interesting Contributions
to the Tribune'S Campfire.
To the Editor NATIONAL TRIBUNE:

To the Editor NATIONAL TRIBUNE:
The uni ust and unkind remarks about the
payment of pensions by the Rochester Democrat
and Chronicle are an insult to every man and
boy who wore the blue from 1861 to '65 and
the man who makes use of such language
ought at once to be provided with a soft place in
some high-toned lunatic asylum. The payment
of pensions should need no defense, but just
such contemplate criticisms make it necessary.
Would the man guilty of such remarks be
mean enough to have refused Mrs. Lincoln,
Mrs. Garfield, or the tens of thousands of SOL
diers hundreds from his own Statel who have
lost arms or legs, or been manned for life
through disease contracted in the service their
pensions for what they have suffered? ! think
he would, and believe every honorable soldier
from his State Will agree with me. Talk about
the pension system being obnoxious to the
principles of free government and productive
of injury to those who pay and receive them"
BOsh! 1t was not obnoxious to have us leave
our homes for $13 month when the Govern
ment wanted men, and now that many are dis
abled from their service it is no injury to pay
what it honestly owes. If Uncle Sam never
gets Impoverished in any worse way than by
the payment Of honest pensions there wont
be much danger, and no soldier will ever be-
come paupcr if he gets what he deserves but
the course pursued by that paper would cause
many poor, deserving soldiers to 90 begging
If the editor will hunt up fraud nearer home
and expose it, he will have plainly to do with
out trying to disgrace the men who saved this
country and | doubt if he was one of them.
;cI,I aJ; b,J
or a leg, or become disabled from disease con-
tracted in the service and to-day was going
around on crutchcs or in wheel-chair, it is a
hundred to one that he would be drawing a
pension, and it is small business to try to
rob those who are disabled. Shame on such
insults! No soldier of the late confederacy
would be guilty of such language - they
were too brave and honorable. The soldiers of
New York State ought to mark this traducer
of their rights, and shun him as they would
the assassin who steals behind one in the dark
to ply his dctestable vocation. There is about
as much truth in these attacks as there is in
the one made by Philadelphia paper on Col
onel Dudley, the particulars of which were
exposed by THE NATIONAL TRrBUNElast week.
After the war hundreds of residents of south
ern Pennsylvania made their claims on the
State for damages caused by the confederates
while on our soil, and they were paid, and the
Government afterwards repaid the State, and
there arc persons to-day who are astonished to
hear that paper talking about "the big appro-
priations for pension purposes are standing
temptation for fraudulent and trumped-up
claims" when it is well-known fact that in
this business some men might go slow and have
but little to say about fraudulent and
trumped-up pension claims" when an investi-
CATION might disclose their true records re-
garding the payment of the border-raid claims
by the State of Pennsylvania.
CHAMBERsBURG,