The original Kentucky Confederate pension law of 1912 specified that a soldier had to have been honorably discharged or served honorably to the end of the war. A soldier who had deserted or was dishonorably discharged was not eligible, unless he returned to the ranks and served at least a year or until the end of the war. This ineligibility included soldiers who had been POWs and taken the Oath of Allegiance in Northern prisons prior to the end of the war.

Because of many protests from veterans who felt they had no other choice than to take the Oath when they were in Northern captivity … some even to save their lives, such as the prisoners that Burbridge arbitrarily chose for execution … the pension board decided that a prisoner who had taken the Oath, but who had been disabled in prison so that he could no longer have served in the CS forces, was eligible for a pension. The new pension law of 1914 incorporated this into the law.

This is probably why Amanda Cochrane got her widow’s pension, since George Cochrane had been a POW and died in prison. Or it could have been that the pension board never saw the CS roster that listed Cochrane as a deserter (I’m presuming it was his unit muster roll, although he could have been called a deserter on the POW rolls as well). Or maybe they didn’t consider that the Yankees listing a soldier as a “deserter” really carried any weight.

The part of the Kentucky CS pension law that caused the most rancor was the requirement that the veteran or widow be indigent and unable to earn a living. Thus, the law clearly only wanted to provide for veterans and widows who were truly needy, but by the time the law was passed in 1912, most veterans were so old that they felt they deserved a pension just for serving, and due to their age. So there were a lot of arguments about whether or not a veteran or widow was too well off to deserve the pension. Most got it anyway.