If There Is Uniformity in Taxation of Property, Shouldn’t Taxation of Blood and Death be Uniform? May 14, 1918

From The Commonwealth, Scotland Neck, N.C., as published on Tuesday, May 14, 1918. Thomas Walter Bickett was governor of the state of North Carolina from 1917 to 1921. He was born and raised in Monroe and taught school before he studied law at UNC-Chapel Hill. Within a year of leaving office, Bickett had a stroke and died. For some reason, his last name is misspelled throughout this article.

By Robert Madry

Chapel Hill, May 14—In a masterful, forceful and eloquent presentation Gov. Bicket spoke to the Confederates, University student battalion, and a host of townspeople in Gerrard hall here Saturday on the occasion of the annual celebration of memorial day. The morning exercises centered around the entertainment of the veterans, following their return from the cemetery. The graves of the Confederate dead were decorated with small flags by the school children, the old soldiers were guests at a dinner served by the Daughters of the Confederacy. Mrs. W.S. Long is president of the local chapter. Major William Cain, commander of the Ashe Camp of Orange County introduced the Governor.

Proceeding the address the University battalion marched around the campus and formed a line on either side of the walk leading to Gerrard Hall. The governor followed by the Veterans passed between the lines.

Governor Bicket spoke in laudable terms of the gallantry and courage displayed by the Confederates in the sixties which elicited the warm commendation of their officers and the admiration of the entire army. He paid a high tribute to General Robert E. Lee, characterizing him as the “knightliest Christian soldier the world has ever known.” The trials the Confederates underwent, the starvation in their camps, the forced marches with shoeless feet were all vividly pictured by the Chief Executive. ‘They have made it impossible for your sons to fail or falter in this crucial hour,” he emphatically declared.

He told of existing conditions in our present camps. “The boys in the camps are better fed, better clothed, and are leading cleaner, more wholesome lives than 95 percent of the boys of their age at home,” he said.

The selective draft law characterized as the fairest and squarest law under which any army was ever raised. If there is a uniformity in taxation of property, why shouldn’t the taxation of blood and death be uniform?” he asked. Equal burdens and equal benefits walk hand in hand. Equal duties follow equal rights. The selective draft law treats everybody alike “from John D. Rockefeller up,” he said.

“The men who don’t support their wife before the war, the room aristocracy, the drug store hangout, were all openly denounced by the Governor.

No young man who is doing clean, honest, serious work and who has a purpose in life ought to break into his education or interfere with his life work by volunteering before he comes of draft age,” the Governor declared, in conclusion.