Look to the North for Reparations; The South Already Paid

A couple of months ago, I read an article about a woman in North Carolina who was still collecting a pension for her father’s service in the War of Northern Aggression. Obviously, he was a Union soldier.


I was absolutely floored. That war ended over 150 years ago and there’s still a pensioner. This is a testament to the endurance of a federal government program. At what point and time do we put a stop to this nonsense?


Well, if Democrats get their way, Americans will end up paying reparations for an institution that died with the Confederacy. These grievance mongers are trying to shackle their ancestors to our pocketbooks. It’s not enough that over 630,000 soldiers lost their lives; no, their bloodlust extends to a perpetual welfare program.


I’ll make the argument the South already paid reparations in the form of Union pensions, protective tariffs, government bonds, carpetbagger theft, and northern monopolies. The 14th Amendment precluded, as a condition of readmission to the union, southern states interference to pay off the federal government’s debt in suppressing the late “rebellion.”


Civil War pensions became an astronomic expense of which the South didn’t benefit. To give you an idea on this transfer of wealth program, here is an excerpt from Southern Reconstruction:


Meanwhile, Republicans increasingly favored reducing the budget surplus by liberalizing Union veterans’ pensions. They succeeded with the 1890 Dependent Pensions Act. It enlarged the number of people who could qualify for assistance. Any soldier who served a mere ninety days and wives who married veterans anytime prior to 1890 became eligible. Any soldier injured during the war who later became unable to perform manual labor was covered. Within four years, pension disbursements doubled from $80 million to $165 million. The budget surplus vanished. Republicans dropped the Blair proposal, thereby demonstrating that protective tariffs and veterans’ pensions were higher priorities than the education of youthful African Americans.


In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt released an executive order that made all veterans over age sixty-two eligible for pensions. The disability platform was essentially augmented to also become an old age assistance program. From 1862 to 1942, accumulated Union veterans’ pensions totaled almost $8 billion. About $7 billion of that went to the North, and the remaining $1 billion was divided between the South and West.


For more than fifty years after the war, pension policy was linked to protective tariffs. Like interest payments on Civil War federal debt and the retirement of such debts, Union veterans’ pensions represented a distributive income policy that transferred income from the impoverished South to the prosperous North.


So, for all those teat squawkers who’re looking for a handout, I suggest you look to the North for reparations; the South already paid.


Source:

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-08/civil-war-vets-pension-still-remains-on-governments-payroll-151-years-after-last-shot-fired


http://freebeacon.com/politics/revealed-dream-democrat-agenda-includes-reparations/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=47f55f78b8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_04_19&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-47f55f78b8-45647961