“Attached to the letter was a copy of Public Law 85-425 as adopted in 1958, which defined the status of Confederate veterans and established for them federal pension rates exactly the same as those afforded to Union veterans.”
Can someone explain this? How could anyone be recieving a pension in 1958 from a war 100 years previous?
It would be applicable to widows. It wasn't unknown for a young woman to marry an old Civil War vet and outlive him by many years. I think the last Confederate widow died only a few years ago. My great great granny got a rebel pension many years after her husband died even though she wasn't that much younger than he.