GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 22, 1886.

To the Senate: 

I return herewith without approval Senate bill No. 1192, entitled “An act granting a pension to Alfred Denny.”

It appears that the claimant entered the United States military service as captain and assistant quartermaster of volunteers on the 12th day of June, 1863.  After remaining in such position for less than a year he resigned to accept a civil position.

The short record of his military service discloses no mention of any accident or disability.  But twenty years after his resignation, and on the 12th day of March, 1884, he reappears as an applicant for a pension, and alleges in his declaration filed in the Pension Bureau that in August, 1863, while in the line of duty, he was, by a sudden movement of the horse he was riding, thrown forward upon the horn of his saddle and thereby received a rupture in his right side, which at some time and in a manner wholly unexplained subsequently caused a rupture in his left side also.

The number of instances in which those of our soldiers who rode horses during the war were injured by being thrown forward upon their saddles indicate that those saddles were very dangerous contrivances.

I am satisfied there is not a particle of merit in this claim, and no facts are presented to me which entitle it to charitable consideration.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 22, 1886.

To the Senate: 

I hereby return without approval Senate bill No. 1400, entitled “An act granting a pension to William H. Beck.”

This claimant enlisted in 1861.  He reenlisted as a veteran volunteer January i, 1864, and was finally mustered out April 20, 1866.  In all this time of service his record shows no medical treatment or claim of disability.  Indeed, an abstract of his reenlistment January 1, 1864, shows a medical examination and perfect soundness.

Notwithstanding all this, he filed his declaration on the 4th day of April, 1879, nearly thirteen years after his discharge, alleging that in June, 1863, he incurred epilepsy, to which he has been subject since, and that his fits have been from one to ten days apart.  To connect this in some way with his military service he stated that the doctor at a hospital said his epilepsy was caused “by jar to the head from heavy firing.”

Six months after this alleged “jar” and his consequent epilepsy he reenlisted upon a medical certificate of perfect soundness and served more than two years thereafter.

Every conceded fact in the case negatives the allegations of his declaration, and the rejection of his claim necessarily followed.

If this disease can be caused in the manner here detailed, its manifestations are such as to leave no doubt of its existence, and it seems to me simply impossible under the circumstances detailed that there should be any lack of evidence to support the claim upon which this bill is predicated.