1 granted by it." The annual payment for pensions in 1878 was somewhat short of 27 millions, being less than for the four preceding years. The Commissioner was hopeful that the high-water mark had been passed. Lincoln's admonition, "to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan" had been carried into effect by what Hall, who served as chaplain during the Civil War, termed "an eminently fitting and generous provision." 2 In 1879, however, the Arrears of Pensions Bill was enacted by the Democratic House and the Republican Senate by large majorities and was signed on January 25 by President Hayes. This law was retroactive, applying both to pensions already granted and those about to be granted. A supposable concrete case will illustrate its working. A private soldier was killed at the battle of Bull Run in 1861. His widow, being tolerably well-todo and not caring to go to any trouble for a small amount did not apply for the eight dollar a month pension that was her due. Having three children, five, four and two years of age when the father was killed, she was entitled, after the passage of the Arrears Act, to arrears up to August 1879, amounting to $1728 for herself and $528 for her now grown-up children. If the stricken soldier had been an officer of the $30 per month grade she could now claim $7000. The Commissioner of pensions testified 1 Rev. E. H. Hall, Mass. Hist. Soc., Feb. 1909, 116; Richardson, vii. 320. 2 Ibid., 114. In a private letter of Dec. 14, 1881 Hayes gives his reasons for signing the bill. Life, Williams, ii. 338 n. 4 See analysis by William Henry Glasson, Studies in History etc., Columbia Univ., Military Pension Leg., 95. before a Congressional committee on February 16, 1880 that the great increase of original claims filed after the passage of the Arrears Act was not due to any unusual percentage of fraudulent claims, although there were many such, but, because before the act was passed, many veterans not badly wounded, or not very ill, or in comfortable circumstances, actuated by patriotic pride, did not think it worth while to make an application; but when they could get a pension dating from their discharge and giving them in a lump a large sum,1 it is easy to see why they should decide, even if not in want, to take a hand in the grab game. By a provision of this law, attorneys were forbidden to receive fees for obtaining arrears on pensions already existing, but the rush of original applicants gave them a veritable harvest. "This period," wrote Matteson who made a study of the subject, "was the heyday of pension attorneys." The pension bureau was well administered under Hayes, Arthur and Cleveland and the frauds on the government were small, but the Arrears Act was a costly piece of legislation; an estimate to the effect that it cost the government 254 millions was not far out of the way.2 The desire for pelf, less probably in the United States than in any other large country, is repugnant to the moralist, especially when he sees it exhibited by the veterans of the Civil War. We now reach 1885 with an annual outlay for pensions of 65 millions. A favorite mode of Congress was to pass a bill giving a pension to some applicant whose claim had been disallowed by the vigilant Commissioner. With the 1 House Reports, 46th Cong. 3d Sess., No. 387, 10, 11. log-rolling that obtains in legislative bodies it is not difficult to believe that many ill-considered acts might be passed. Cleveland during his first administration vetoed 228 private pension bills, 175 of them because the injuries in question were not received in the service. His veto messages furnish a sad commentary on the impulse that drives so many men and women to depths of deceit in order to get money from the commonwealth to which they are in no way entitled. Congress must have been glad of the sober second thought represented in the vetoes of the President, as it passed only one of its bills over his veto. In 1887 the Dependent Pension bill, popularly known as the "Pauper Pension," passed the Democratic House by 180:76 and the Republican Senate almost unanimously. In general the purpose of the act was to provide a pension for disabled veterans and indigent widows of veterans without reference to the source of the veteran's ailment or of his death in the case of pension for the widow. General Boynton, a soldier and intelligent newspaper correspondent, declared that it was "a scheme engineered in the main by pension attorneys." General J. D. Cox, whose noble service is recorded in my volumes on the Civil War, protested against it. In February, 1909 Rev. Edward H. Hall read a paper before the Massachusetts Historical Society, in which he said: "I have at my side, as I write, a letter from a Washington attorney informing me that there is money due me from the Treasury on account of my services in the Civil War and 1 Hall, 118. Not voting 63, Record 742. The Senate vote was without division, Record 1067. 2 The Nation, 1887, 136, 175. This is offering to prosecute the claim in my behalf. not the only missive of the kind that I have received. Not a year passes but these unknown friends at Washington, with touching solicitude for my temporal welfare, promise to make all the investigations necessary to secure for me the payment of this debt. . . . How is it that I am an object of such interest to these almoners of the nation's bounty? As a matter of record I acted as chaplain of the Forty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry during its term of service, receiving as pay and allowance a sum quite equal to the average salary of my fellow clergymen who remained at home, retiring unwounded, as it happened, and with my general health quite unimpaired, to survive the war for more than forty years with no serious sign of illness. Let me add that I was aware at the time and have been increasingly conscious ever since of having received from the country, not in pecuniary compensation alone, but in opportunities of service and in the gratitude and distinctions that a great nation only can bestow, tenfold more than I was able to contribute to her welfare." 1 The Grand Army of the Republic took no part in the furtherance of the Arrears Pension, but between 1879 and 1887 it became an active advocate of pensions and was strongly in favor of the Dependent Pension bill. Dr. 1 M. H. S. 113. After the bill had passed Congress and before the President vetoed it, The Nation said, "Practically all the men who were either wounded in battle or incurred disability, which a conscientious person could attribute to army service, are already pensioners. We are now to deal with a class which includes all the shirks who tried to keep out of harm's way, all the men who entered the army not from motives of patriotism, but because they were either attracted into it by the great bounties offered or were forced into it by draft-in short all of what that gallant Union soldier Gen. Bragg called in the House the other day 'the rubbish of the army."" The Nation, Feb. 3, 1887, 92. 1 Glasson, who has made a special study of our pension system, wrote in his intelligent paper, "The passage of the Arrears Act, instead of satisfying the pension attorneys and claimants, resulted in a demand for further legislation;" and he quoted with pertinency one of the speakers in the Congressional debates, "This appetite for penV sions doth increase by what it feeds on." It is curious to recall how public sentiment was manufactured to demand such legislation from Congress; however it is well known that a small body of men, if sufficiently persistent, can often bring a legislative body to adopt their views, provided they have the semblance of a good cause. Everybody at the North believed that the volunteers who went to the front and fought to save the Union should be provided for with unprecedented liberality. "All that a man hath will he give for his life" was taken by Lincoln to imply that since any one who shouldered a musket risked his all, he was entitled to loving care from a grateful government. But the liberal pensioning of bounty jumpers, substitutes hired at a great price, drafted men, skulkers, cowards and deserters was quite another matter. The pension attorneys, proceeding skilfully and with purely sordid motives, managed to confuse the two classes of beneficiaries so effectually that an almost indiscriminate granting of pensions came to be regarded as a sacred duty. Thus the Grand Army of the Republic was deluded and imposed upon and any one who opposed liberal pensions was looked upon as little better than a traitor to the Union; hence the enthusiasm that attended the passage of this Pauper Pension bill. 1 Glasson, 108. |