He filed a claim in the Pension Bureau alleging that he received a saber wound in the head March 7, 1862, and a gunshot wound in the left leg in the autumn of the same year.

It appears upon examination of his military record that there is no mention of either disability, and that he served two years after the time he claims to have received these injuries.  So far from being disabled, it is reported as an incident of his army life that in the year 1864 this soldier was found guilty of desertion and sentenced to forfeit all pay and allowances for the time he was absent.

The report of the committee, in apparent explanation of the lack of any official mention of the injuries alleged, declares that “the fact that the records of the War Department are often imperfect works great hardship to men who apply for pensions;” and his conviction of desertion and the lack of proof to sustain his allegations as to his injuries are disposed of as follows in the committee’s report: 

The Adjutant-General’s report shows that the man was under discipline for some irregularities, but notwithstanding this and the lack of the required proof that he was wounded in the line of duty the committee are of the opinion that, situated as he was, he was very liable to and very probably did receive the wound from which he has suffered and is still suffering.

I am convinced that there exists serious difficulty on the part of the claimant instead of in the record of the War Department; that the kind of irregularity for which he was under discipline is calculated to produce a lack of confidence in his merits as a pensioner, and that the fact of his situation being such as to render him liable to receive a wound is hardly sufficient to establish his right to a soldier’s pension, which is only justified by injuries actually received and affirmatively proven.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 2, 1886.

To the Senate: 

I return herewith without approval Senate bill No. 1726, entitled “An act granting a pension to Augustus Field Stevens.”

It appears that this claimant enlisted August 21, 1861, and was discharged on the 3d day of October, 1861, after a service of less than two months, upon a medical certificate of disability which represented him as “incapable of performing the duties of a soldier because of general debility, advanced age, unfit for service before entering.”

His claim is not based upon any wound or injury, but he alleges that he contracted chronic diarrhea or dysentery while in the service.  The committee to whom the bill was referred by the Senate admit that “there is a quantity of contradictory testimony, biased in about equal proportion for and against the claimant.”

His claim was rejected by the Pension Bureau in 1882 and again in 1885, after a special examination concerning the facts, on the ground that the claimant had failed to show any pensionable disability contracted while he was in the service.