From the end of the Civil War into the 1880s, Congress debated soldiers’ pensions. After the civil war, the Union army veterans, allied with the Republican Party and jolted the government to provide the northern soldiers and their widows with pensions. The North had already spent two million to fight the Civil War, and the veteran’s pensions had cost them eight billion dollars, it was one of the largest welfare commitments the federal government had ever made. However Confederate veterans were excluded, even though some Southern States funded small pensions and built old-age homes for ex-soldiers.
In May of 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service to raise an army. So all men between the ages of twenty one and thirty had …show more content…
The veterans couldn’t believe the government was using gas on their own veterans, and they were only asking for what they were promised. Each year the veterans returned, finally in 1936, the bill was voted in and one million got bonus. This has become known as the ‘Bonus March.’ Then in June of 1944 the “bill of rights” would be voted in to give compensation to the veterans for missing other chances to jobs or other opportunities. Then we had WWII, I lost an uncle there on V-day. The veterans of WWII never would talk about the war, I sit with one for three years at the Va. He was walking with his buddy across some railroad tracks, then his buddy stepped on an explosive and he was blown into so many pieces, that they couldn’t find him. The veteran I sat with lost the hearing in his right ear, so I always sat on his left side so he could hear me. His daughter had told me that, but he wouldn’t say anything about it. Then there came the Cold War, the veterans are getting more benefits as time goes on or so it seems. The Viet Nam War ended 50 years ago. My husband was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and at first he was told that he would have to find shipmates that could verify