Port Townsend Union Veterans Condemn Morning Leader Editorials
Farragut Post No. 14 of the Grand Army of the Republic condemned the Port Townsend Morning Leader for belittling pensioners and demeaning the Civil War, calling on citizens to boycott the newspaper.
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At a meeting of Farragut Post, No. 14, G.A.R. held in Port Townsend, two editorials from the Port Townsend Morning Leader were severely condemned in resolutions. The Leader had suggested that the war was so long ago that the North should stop caring for those who fought in it, characterizing pensioners as 'complaining old pensioners' and calling the Civil War a 'dirty nigger war.' In response, the veterans resolved: 'We demand that all shall be done in the spirit of the broadest liberality. We maintain that in no sense can the distribution of pensions to disabled soldiers and families of the heroic dead be considered as charity, but an act of simple justice. We call upon all good citizens to rebuke such atrocious and blasphemous sentiments by withdrawing all encouragement from the periodical which gives them currency.'
“We unqualifiedly denounce the assertion that the days of 1861-65 can ever be forgotten... and unhesitatingly proclaim that they can emanate only from the disordered brain and barren heart of a dastard and an ingrate.”
This 1893 conflict over the legacy of the Civil War illustrates the deep, lingering ideological rifts in Washington during the post-Reconstruction era. It is a striking reminder that local debates over who 'deserves' state support and how we interpret the violence of our history are not modern inventions, but bedrock civic arguments in our region's past.
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