The captain of the company testifies that the soldier was employed with the ambulance corps, and that for misconduct he (the captain) ordered him to his company and censured him; that very soon after that the soldier was absent at roll call and was marked as absent without leave; that in a day or two after that a member of a detail returned to camp from Hamburg Landing and reported that he had seen the soldier there and had been told by him that “he was off and would never go back.”  Thereupon he was dropped from the roll as a deserter.

Various theories are presented to account for the soldier’s absence in other ways than by desertion, some of his comrades going so far as to express the opinion that he was murdered at the instigation of his captain.  None of these theories, however, seem to be more than conjectures with various degrees of plausibility.

If the question of desertion could be solved favorably to the beneficiary, another difficulty immediately arises from the fact that there is absolutely no proof of death except the soldier’s long absence without knowledge of his whereabouts; and if his death could be presumed the cause of it and whether connected at all with military service are matters regarding which we have no information whatever.

I am unable to see how a case in such a situation can be considered a proper subject for favorable pension legislation.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, October 16, 1888.

To the House of Representatives: 

I return without approval House bill No. 10661, entitled “An act granting a pension to Mrs. Sophia Vogelsang.”

The husband of this beneficiary was severely wounded in the military service of the United States, and in consequence of said wound his left leg was amputated.  This was in 1862.  In January, 1863, another amputation was performed higher up above the knee.  He appears at that time to have been living, or at least was treated, at Detroit, Mich.  He was pensioned at the rate of $30 per month at the time of his death, which occurred at Louisville, Ky., where he appears to have then resided, on the 21st day of July, 1885.

The beneficiary filed a claim for pension in November, 1885, alleging that her husband died of gangrene.

There does not, however, seem to be a particle of evidence establishing that cause of death.  On the contrary, the report received at the Pension Bureau of his death attributes it to sunstroke, and this does not seem to be directly questioned.

The report of the House committee to whom this bill was referred proceeds upon the theory that death was caused from the use of opium to allay the pain of the wound.  This theory is presented upon the alleged opinion of the surgeon living in Detroit, who made the second amputation in 1863.  He says that the pain of the wound obliged the soldier to take morphine.  But it does not appear that he observed the case for a long time preceding death.  Instead of his giving an opinion that the disability and morphine produced death, he says, as it is reported to me, after describing the condition of the limb previous to its amputation in 1863 and immediately thereafter: