GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, August 4, 1886.

To the House of Representatives: 

I herewith return without approval House bill No. 8556, entitled “An act granting a pension to Abraham Points.”

This soldier enlisted August 11, 1864, and was mustered out June 28, 1865.

He was treated during his short term of service for “catarrhal,” “constipation,” “diarrhea,” “jaundice,” and “colic.”

He filed an application for pension in 1878, alleging that some of his comrades in a joke twisted his arm in such a manner that the elbow joint became stiffened and anchylosed, and that his eyes became sore and have continued to grow worse ever since.  There is no record of either of these disabilities.

The application was denied upon the ground, as stated in the report from the Pension Bureau, that the claim “was specially examined, and it was shown conclusively, from the evidence of neighbors and acquaintances of good repute and standing, that the alleged disabilities existed at and prior to claimant’s enlistment.”

I am satisfied from an examination of the facts submitted to me that this determination was correct.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, August 4, 1886.

To the House of Representatives: 

I herewith return without approval House bill No. 3551, entitled “An act granting a pension to George W. Cutler, late a private in Company B, Ninth New Hampshire Volunteers.”

This claimant enlisted July 12, 1862, and was discharged June 22, 1863, for disability resulting from “scrofulous ulceration of the tibia and fibula of right leg; loss of sight of left eye.”

He made a claim for pension in 1865, alleging an injury while loading commissary stores, resulting in spitting of blood, injury to lungs, and heart disease.

This claim was rejected August 31, 1865.

In 1867 he again enlisted in the United States infantry, and was discharged from that enlistment March 29, 1869, for disability, the certificate stating that—­

He is unfit for military service by reason of being subject to bleeding of the lungs.  He was wounded, while in the line of his duty in the United States Army, at Fredericksburg, Va., December 13, 1862.  Said wound is not the cause of his disability.

Afterwards, and in the year 1879, he filed affidavits claiming that he was wounded by a minie ball at the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, and was injured by falling down an embankment.

In 1883 he filed an affidavit in which he stated that the disability for which he claims a pension arose from injuries received in falling down a bank at Fredericksburg and being tramped on by troops, causing a complication of diseases resulting in general debility.

The statement in the certificate of discharge from his second enlistment as to the wound he received by a minie ball at Fredericksburg was of course derived from his own statement, as it was related to a prior term of service.