1526 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
Mr. Berry. I said that here is a mere constitutional power; that 
over the District of Columbia Congress has the power to do it. Then 
the Senator asked me if I would take it away from the women and 
children. I will ask the Senator a question. 
Mr. Buacxsurn. I will answer it. 
Mr. Berry. Take some private soldier who left his home, his wife, 
and his children, in the early days of 1861, a volunteer in the army 
from his own State of Kentucky. It is true that he was unknown to 
fame, yet he did his duty manfully and nobly, day by day, until he 
fell upon the battlefield, leaving his wife and children helpless. I ask 
the Senator would he vote for an amendment on this sundry civil 
appropriation bill giving to each one of the children of a man of that 
character, where it can be shown that he did his whole duty, $10,000, 
if it should be offered as an amendment to the bill? 
Mr. Buacxsurn. I will answer the Senator, with his permission, 
and say that during the well-nigh twenty years that I have been in 
Congress, in one House or the other, I have never failed to vote to 
give an adequate pension to support the widow and the children of 
every loyal soldier who was killed or disabled in the Union service; I 
will do that now; and in doing it, I speak for the section from which 
Icome. And I speak for the Senator from Arkansas as well as for 
myself. This Government owes its obligations to the soldiers who 
defended it when its vitality was at stake and in issue, and no man 
from any loyal State has ever gone farther than I have always done, 
or will go farther than I shall always do, by way of making recog- 
nition to them for the service that they rendered toa cause that I did 
not espouse. 
Mr. Berry. The Senator from Kentucky considers an adequate 
pension for the widow of such a private soldier the sum of $12 per 
month, while for the children of this man who was not a soldier he 
proposes to take out of the Treasury and give them $10,000. I have 
never posed here asa particular friend of the soldier in voting for 
pensions, but I have taken the ground that the widow of a private 
soldier ought to have identically the same amount of pension as the 
widow of an officer, and that to give one $2,000 a year and to the 
other $12 a month is absolute injustice and contrary to the spirit of the 
Government under which we live. 
Mr. President, if this Government owes Mr. Henry $1, if it owes 
him $10,000, if it owes him any other sum of money, there is no man 
here who will vote it more cheerfully than I; but why, in this vast 
concourse of 63,000,000 of people, shall we select out individuals 
who are enabled by reason of their friends here to bring pressure to 
bear upon members of Congress, while thousands and tens of thou- 
sands equally deserving go without a dollar? Is that justice? Is it 
justice to those simply who can get a majority of the Senate on their 
side to say that we will take the people’s money and give it to them, 
