Statewide County GaArchives News.....The Soldier’s Home July 28, 1892
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Phyllis Thompson http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00011.html#0002524 October 7, 2007, 3:32 pm

The Georgia Enterprise July 28, 1892
July 28, 1892     
     Three miles from Atlanta, in a north-easterly direction, there stands a 
large drab-colored, frame dwelling. The grounds about it are beautifully 
shaded, the house is new and attractive looking, but no signs of life are to be 
seen about the place. The blinds are closed and no sounds of humanity are heard 
within, for the disapproval of our last legislature rests upon the building and 
the grounds. The building with its fifty rooms and with its nineteen acres of 
land is known as the Confederate Home and it will loom up like a veritable 
mountain of difficulty in the path of some who want political honors. It is 
quiet and deserted now, for no one occupies it, but before the meeting of the 
next legislature it will rise as a huge question for the people of Georgia to 
deal with.
     The home will not be allowed to remain closed much longer for it will 
doubtless be accepted by the next legislature. Some time ago the Fulton County 
Veterans appointed a committee to prepare an address to the people of Georgia 
in regard to the home.
     At the regular meeting of the association a few days ago, a resolution was 
adopted that General WALKER, who was appointed to prepare the address, should 
do so at once, appealing in it to the people of the state asking them to 
endorse the home and send the legislature only such men as would vote for the 
state to accept the home. The address will be prepared in a conservative 
manner, putting forward the claims of the old soldiers, but doing it a calm, 
reasonable manner.
     President CALHOUN, in speaking of the home said that since the adjournment 
of the last legislature he had received written and verbal communications from 
every section of the state, and the sentiment in favor of accepting the home 
was almost unanimous. “The veterans,” said we, “are organizing all over the 
state, and are endorsing the home and asking their people to refrain from 
sending any but those who favor its acceptance to the legislature.
***
The Georgia Enterprise, August 18, 1892
The Soldier’s Home
     The acceptance of the Soldier’s Home by the state legislature, says the 
Atlanta Constitution, is no longer a mooted question but a well-assured and 
absolutely certainty. It seems that when the last legislature adjourned the 
friends of the measure who advocated its passage and who came as the 
representatives of every district in the state, immediately went to work in 
behalf of the rejected measure. They argued the question fully and freely, 
discussing it from the standpoint of the merchant, the laborer, the politician 
and the old soldier. They were deeply in earnest and in putting the matter 
squarely before the  people they left no stone unturned in their efforts to 
secure a reversal in the popular judgment. Their task was a labor of love in 
behalf of the old soldiers. They realized that the state owed them a great 
debt, a debt of gratitude that no appropriation could fully cancel, and that 
while the north was pensioning her veterans from the bounty of the nation it 
would never do for the south, or for Georgia at least, to be untrue to the men 
who fought for her and who imperiled everything except their honor. But the 
great heart of the state among the pines, has always been in sympathy with the 
Soldier’s Home. Ever since Henry Grady himself the son of a confederate 
soldier, originated the idea of a home for the worn out and indigent veterans, 
it has been dear to the people of Georgia. The legislature however, that sat in 
judgment upon the measure, though honest in its deliberations and patriotic in 
the opposition with which it defeated its passage, did not, as a matter of 
fact, represent the merchants and farmers of Georgia. But the next legislature, 
instructed by the voice of the people, will declare in favor of the bill by an 
overwhelming majority. That was determined at the recent convention. A majority 
of the delegates, so far as their views have been ascertained, are pronounced 
in their advocacy of the Soldier’s Home.
     Judge W. L. CALHOUN, the president of the board of trustees, and whose 
love for the Confederate veterans is only equaled by the gallantry with which 
he acquitted himself in their ranks, was seen in regard to the outlook for the 
home. “I am delighted,” said he exultantly. “ I feel that the question is now 
settled, and the next legislature will be a unit in accepting the home. Several 
gentlemen, who were formerly opposed to the measure and regarded it as a 
precedent too unwise for the state to adopt, have come to me in person and 
assured me of a hearty cooperation and sympathy in the work of securing its 
passage. Eight Southern states have already established homes. Virginia in 
spite of her state debt, has voted a handsome donation to her old soldiers, and 
more than that she supports them yearly with a liberal appropriation from her 
treasury. Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas 
and Texas, each of them has established a comfortable home for the old veterans 
and the other states of the south are rapidly moving in the same direction. It 
will be a reproach to the state and to every Georgian if the next legislature 
refuses to vote the appropriation. But Georgia is safe and her acceptance of 
the home is already a fact.”



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