Resolution on Pensions for Wounded Veterans, 3 December 1784

Resolution on Pensions for Wounded Veterans

[3 December 1784]

Resolved, that it is the opinion of this committee, That the Executive ought to be authorised to put on the pension list all officers and soldiers, who have been wounded in the service of their country, and whom they may think entitled to the same, upon application being made to them therefor.1

Printed copy (JHDV description begins Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Williamsburg. Beginning in 1780, the portion after the semicolon reads, Begun and Held in the Town of Richmond. In the County of Henrico. The journal for each session has its own title page and is individually paginated. The edition used is the one in which the journals for 1777–1786 are brought together in two volumes, with each journal published in Richmond in either 1827 or 1828 and often called the “Thomas W. White reprint.” description ends , Oct. 1784, p. 53). No Ms of the resolution has been found.

1. As chairman of the Committee for Courts of Justice, JM reported that the petition of Joseph Anderson, “praying to be put on the list of pensioners,” had been considered. Instead of routinely passing on the merits of Anderson’s petition, the committee recommended that this time-consuming problem should be shifted away from the legislature to the discretion of the governor and Council of State. The resolution was approved and the way cleared for the amendments incorporated in the Bill Enabling the Executive to Pension Disabled Veterans, 16 Nov. 1784. Joseph Anderson (1736– ca. 1823) had enlisted in 1779 in the 11th Virginia Regiment and subsequently “received a dangerous hurt which rendered him incapable of duty.” In 1821 Anderson applied for a pension, declaring his main assets were “one Negro man aged near 70, [and] 200 acres of poor land entirely unproductive” (Virginia Revolutionary Pension Applications, John Frederick Dorman, comp. [15 vols.; Washington, 1958——], II, 32).

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Source Project: Madison Papers
Title: Resolution on Pensions for Wounded Veterans, 3 December 1784
Author: Madison, James
Date: 3 December 1784

Reference

Cite as: “Resolution on Pensions for Wounded Veterans, 3 December 1784,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0091. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, vol. 8, 10 March 1784 – 28 March 1786, ed. Robert A. Rutland and William M. E. Rachal. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973, p. 174.]