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.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Republican Party Accursed Forever
[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.
For
forty years they have been the builders of the New South and the
projectors of her larger destiny. The Federal Government provides for
the soldiers that followed its flag. That is right. We will provide for
the soldiers of the armies of the “storm-cradled nation that fell.”
When
Senator Pritchard was a member of the Legislature in 1895 he and his
party voted against giving one cent of pension to the needy heroes that
had hobbled home on crutches from Appomattox.
There
is one class of men whom we do not believe in pensioning – the
deserter. There are men here who remember the last two years of the
war. The world was against us. Armies were crashing down upon us like a
ring of fire. Sherman was marching to the sea and leaving behind him
ashes and desolation. In that time there were men whose courage never
faltered.
Ragged
and hungry and bleeding they stood in the trenches around Richmond and
Petersburg. They stood with an unfailing devotion, though sometimes they
knew that their little ones at home were living on the corn they picked
up from the wagon ruts of the invading armies. They died remembering
Dixie like the Greeks remembering Argos – in the language of the old
song: “While one kissed a ringlet of thin gray hair and one kissed a
lock of brown.”
But
there were some who did not stand. Traitors and deserters they were.
They turned their backs upon the only home and country that they ever
had. They sneaked through the lines. They threw away their old gray
uniform and put on the blue. They came back to shoot and kill, to rob
the defenseless wives and mothers of their comrades who were fighting
and dying at the front; to burn their homes and to murder the innocent.
To
these men Senator Pritchard has given a royal pension. He said to the
hero of the Confederacy that he might starve, but with the money of the
honest people he feeds and clothes the deserter.
Yes,
I denounce this in the name of the forty thousand sons of North
Carolina who sleep tonight beneath the sod in the battle-scarred bosom
of old Virginia. I denounce it in the name of the men who rushed
defiant of death through the storm of Chickamauga and Gettysburg. In
the name of every Confederate soldier I denounce it. In memory of the
women who were robbed and the men who were murdered I denounce it. In
the name of all brave men who love courage and despise cowardice, who
believe in fidelity to comrades and in love for home and in loyalty to a
great cause, I denounce this infamous act. I do not stand alone.
Here is the resolution of the last Reunion of Confederate Veterans of North Carolina:
“Resolved,
That we condemn and denounce the Act of Congress which rewards
treachery and perfidy in giving pensions to Confederate deserters for
fighting against their former flag and comrades.”
The judgment of the South is that the party that starves the soldier and pensions the deserter should be accursed forever.
The
child has not yet been born in North Carolina that will see the day
when the party that has degraded our people . . . will be restored to
power. The new day has dawned, but the judgment has been pronounced
against this Republican party. Democracy, united, enthusiastic and
steadfast in its purpose to guard the welfare of all the people, to
protect North Carolina from the hand of the despoiler, to promote the
upbuilding of this great State, marches forward with victorious
assurances.”
(Speech
(excerpt) of Hon. Locke Craig, Joint Debate with Sen. Jeter Pritchard,
October 9, 1902, Memoirs and Speeches of Locke Craig, Hackney &
Moale Company, 1923, pp. 85-88)
