Part 48
The evidence taken upon a careful examination of this application seems to establish, by the admission of the applicant and by other evidence, the correctness of the position taken by the Pension Bureau in rejecting the claim, that whatever disability was incurred existed before enlistment and was in no manner attributable to military service.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 10, 1888_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I return without approval House bill No. 2233, entitled "An act granting a pension to Bernard Carlin."
By this bill it is proposed to pension the beneficiary therein named as of Company A, Fourteenth Regiment of Missouri Volunteer Infantry.
It seems that he served in the company and regiment named, but that he also served in Company A, Sixty-sixth Illinois Regiment, and it is claimed that while in the latter service exclusively he received the injuries for which a pension is claimed.
His application is still pending in the Pension Bureau, and the papers pertaining to the same are now in the hands of an examiner for special examination.
I think this should be completed before a special act is passed, and I understand this to be in accordance with a general rule adopted by Congress and its pension committees. This is certainly the correct course to be pursued in this case, in view of the failure to state in the special bill the regiment and company to which the soldier belonged at the time of the incurrence of disability. This can be corrected by the Pension Bureau if the claim is found meritorious.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 10, 1888_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I return herewith a joint resolution which originated in the Senate, and is numbered 17, providing for the printing of additional copies of the United States map of the edition of 1886, prepared by the Commissioner of Public Lands.
This resolution directs that 7,500 of these maps shall be printed at a rate not exceeding $1.35 each; that 2,000 of said maps shall be for the use of the Senate, 4,000 for the use of the House of Representatives, 500 for the Commissioner of the Land Office, and that 1,000 be mounted and sold at the price of $1.50 each. The sum of $10,125 is appropriated to pay the expense of the publication of said maps.
The propriety and expediency of this appropriation, to be applied so largely by the two branches of Congress, should be left to legislative discretion.
I believe, however, that through inadvertence the duplication of the edition of these maps issued in 1886 has been directed by this joint resolution instead of the edition of 1887.
The map of 1886 was published at a cost of $1.25 per copy.
The map of 1887 will very soon be issued at a cost of $1 per copy, and the publishers have offered to print an enlarged edition at the rate of 95 cents for each map. This map will be later, more correct, more valuable in every way, and cheaper than that issued the previous year.
Upon these facts I return the joint resolution without approval, in the belief that the Congress will prefer to correct the same by directing the publication of the latest, best, and cheapest map, and reducing the amount appropriated therefor.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 14, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 2653, entitled "An act granting a pension to Mary Curtin."
The husband of this beneficiary was mustered into the military service October 8, 1862, was wounded in the right arm, and was discharged September 3, 1863.
He was pensioned for his wound to the time of his death, September 17, 1880.
The physician attending him in his last illness testified that the deceased was in the last stages of consumption when pneumonia intervened and caused his death.
I do not understand that this physician gives the least support to the theory that the wound for which this soldier was pensioned was in the slightest degree connected with his death, and there seems to be nothing in the case to justify the conclusion that such was the fact.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 14, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 1076, entitled "An act granting a pension to the widow of John Leary, deceased."
This bill does not give the name of the intended beneficiary, but merely directs that the name of the widow of John Leary, late first sergeant in Battery F, Third Artillery, United States Army, be placed upon the pension roll, and that she be paid the sum of $20 per month.
John Leary first enlisted in the Regular Army July 26, 1854, and reenlisted in August, 1859. He was slightly wounded July 1, 1862, and appears to have been discharged March 25, 1863, on account of syphilitic iritis. In April, 1863, he entered the general service and acted as a clerk in the Adjutant-General's Office until April 1, 1864, when he was discharged.
Neither he nor his widow ever filed a claim in the Pension Bureau, but an application on behalf of his minor children was filed in 1882.
The soldier died on the 8th day of December, 1872, of pneumonia, and his widow remarried in 1876.
The application on behalf of the children was denied on the ground that the death of the soldier was not due to any cause arising from his military service. The youngest child will reach the age of 16 in September, 1888.
It is stated in the report of the Senate committee to whom this bill was referred that the second husband, to whom this widow was married in 1876, is now dead, and it is proposed to pension her as the widow of John Leary, her first husband, at the rate of $20 per month.
In the unusual cases when a widow has been pensioned on account of the death of her first husband, notwithstanding her remarriage, which forfeited her claim under the general law, it has been well established that she was again a widow by the death of her second husband, that beyond all controversy the death of the first husband was due to his military service, and such advanced age or disability has been shown on the part of the widow as prevented self-support.
In this case the name of the widow is not in the bill; there is hardly room for the pretense that her first husband's death was due to his military service, her age is given as over 40 years, and $20 a month is allowed her; being considerably more than is generally allowed in cases where a widow's right is clear, with no complications of second marriage, and her necessities great.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 14, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:.
I return without approval Senate bill No. 1762, entitled "An act granting a pension to Benjamin A. Burtram."
The beneficiary named in this bill was mustered into the military service November 26, 1861; he was reported present until February 28, 1862, and was discharged for disability July 26, 1862.
The medical certificate of the disability of this soldier was made by the senior surgeon of a hospital in Louisville, Ky., and stated that the soldier had been disabled for sixty days; that his lungs were affected with tubercular deposits in both, and that there was some irregularity in the action of the heart; that he was of consumptive family, his mother, brother, and two sisters having died of that disease according to his and his father's account.
It is of course supposed that this certificate was based upon an examination of the patient, though both he and his father seem to have supplemented such an examination with statements establishing a condition and history which operated to bring about a discharge.
I do not find, however, either as the result of examinations or statements, any other trouble or disability alleged than those mentioned above.
But in 1879, seventeen years after the soldier's discharge, and during the period when arrearages of pensions were allowed on such applications, he filed a claim for pension, in which he alleged that about December 1, 1861, while unloading gun boxes, he incurred a rupture, and that in January, 1862, he was taken with violent pains in left arm and side, causing permanent disability.
It will be observed that the time of the incurrence of these disabilities is fixed as quite early in the very short military service of this soldier; and it certainly seems that, though short, his term of service was sufficiently long to develop such disabilities as he claims to have incurred to such an extent that they neither would have escaped in the succeeding July the examination of the surgeon nor the mention of the soldier.
A medical examination which followed the application for pension in 1879 disclosed a large scrotal hernia, but no discoverable trouble of left arm and side.
A special examination of the case was made and a large amount of testimony taken. Without giving it in any detail as it is reported to me, I fail to find in it reasonably satisfactory proof that the disabilities upon which he now bases his claim for a pension were incurred in the military service.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 22, 1888_.
_To the Senate_.
I return without approval Senate bill No. 3038, entitled "An act for the relief of P.E. Parker."
Mr. Parker was a surety with six other persons upon an official bond given by one Franklin Travis, a collector of internal revenue, which bond was dated on the 9th day of May, 1867. A few years after that the collector became a defaulter to the Government for something over $27,000. Suit was commenced against the sureties upon the bond, and the defense was presented in their behalf that by reason of the imposition of new duties and responsibilities upon the collector after the execution of the bond his sureties were released. Judgment, however, passed against them, and the property of the beneficiary named in this bill was sold upon said judgment for the sum of $2,366.95. But only $1,793.16 of such amount was paid into the United States Treasury, the remainder having been applied to the payment of fees and expenses.
After the application of this sum to the payment of the judgment a bill was passed by the Congress relieving all these sureties from liability upon the bond. It appears that the amount above stated was all the money collected thereupon. The grant of the relief of these sureties by the Congress apparently was the same interposed by them to the suit in which the judgment was recovered.
The present bill directs the Secretary of the Treasury to pay to the surety Parker the sum of $2,336.95, the entire amount for which his property was sold, though the Senate committee to which the bill was referred reported in favor of reducing this sum to $1,793.16, the amount actually received by the United States upon its indebtedness.
It seems to me that the action of Congress in relieving these sureties was generous in the extreme, and if money was to be refunded which was apparently legally recovered and collected it should not exceed the amount the Government actually received. The Government is in no default and should be put to no expense in refunding the small sum recovered on account of the defalcation of its officer whose good conduct this beneficiary guaranteed. I think it would better subserve public interests if no further relief should be granted than that already afforded.
There is another fact reported to me which deprives this surety of any equitable claim for further relief. It appears from an examination of this matter that the man who is now attempting to be reimbursed this money from the Government Treasury commenced a suit against his cosureties for this identical money on the ground of their liability with him, and that he actually collected from two of them in such suit the sum of $1,747.16.
If this is true, it is speaking mildly of the claim he now makes against the Government to say that it should not have been presented.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 22, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 2616, entitled "An act granting a pension to James E. Kabler."
This beneficiary enlisted August 10, 1862. He is reported as absent sick for November and December, 1862; present for January and February, 1863; on the rolls for March and April he is reported as deserted, and for May and June as under arrest. On the 17th of September, 1863, after having been in the service a little over a year, he was mustered out with his company with the remark "absent without leave and returned to duty with loss of fifty-two days' pay by order of General Boyle." The charge of desertion does not appear to have been removed.
He filed a claim for pension in 1870 on account of quinsy alleged to have been contracted about December 7, 1862, with some evidence to support the claim. Three medical examinations fail to establish the existence of this disease in a pensionable degree, and it is reported to me from the Pension Bureau that in March, 1882, the family physician of the beneficiary stated that though he had practiced in his family for eight or nine years he had no recollection of treating him for quinsy or any other disease.
It seems to me that neither the service nor the alleged disability of this beneficiary are of a meritorious character.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 22, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 2370, entitled "An act granting a pension to Sarah C. Anderson and children under 16 years of age."
William H. Anderson, the husband and the father of the beneficiaries named in this bill, enlisted on the 27th day of August, 1862, and is reported as sick or absent a large part of his short term of service. He was discharged April 23, 1863, to date November 5, 1862, on a surgeon's certificate of disability for "tertiary syphilis, with ulcerated throat and extensive nodes on the tibia of both legs."
He never filed an application for pension. He was admitted to an insane asylum in September, 1883, suffering with epilepsy, chronic diarrhea, and dementia, and died of pneumonia on the 26th day of February, 1884.
His symptoms and troubles after his discharge, so far as they are stated, are entirely consistent with the surgeon's certificate of disability given at the time of his discharge, and there seems to be an entire lack of testimony connecting in any reasonable way his death with any incident of his military service.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 22, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 2206, entitled "An act granting a pension to David H. Lutman."
The beneficiary named in this bill was pensioned in 1885 on account of spinal irritation, the result of measles.
In 1886 he filed a claim for increase of pension, alleging rheumatism, and the board of examining surgeons at Cumberland, Md., upon an examination, found no evidence of spinal irritation or rheumatism, and he was dropped from the pension rolls on the ground that the disability for which he was pensioned had ceased to exist.
He afterwards filed medical and lay testimony tending to show that he suffered from disease of the back, legs, and arms, and he was thereupon, and on the 8th day of October, 1886, again examined by the board of examining surgeons at Hagerstown, Md., who reported as follows:
We have stripped him, and find a splendid specimen, square built from the ground up, muscles well developed, his appearance indicative of perfect health. No curvature of spine, disease or irritation of spinal cord; no atrophy of any muscles or evidence of weakness. No impairment of motion anywhere.
If there is any value to be placed upon the reports of these examining boards, the refusal of the Pension Bureau to restore this beneficiary to the rolls was fully justified; and this is not a proper case, in my opinion, for interference with that determination.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 22, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 645, entitled "An act granting a pension to Mrs. Margaret B. Todd."
This bill does not describe the beneficiary as related to any soldier of the war, but from other data it is found that she is the widow of Frank G. Todd, who served as a private in the One hundred and eighteenth Volunteer Infantry from July, 1863, to May, 1864, when he was transferred to the Navy. It appears that he served in the Navy from May 13, 1864, until April 10, 1866. He died in January, 1878, from exhaustion, as stated by the physicians who attended him.
There is scarcely a particle of satisfactory evidence showing his condition from the time of his discharge to 1871, and there is almost an entire lack of proof showing a connection between his death and any incident of his service. The widow in her application to the Pension Bureau for a pension states that she has children who were born in 1870, 1871, and 1878.
There seems to be no record of any disability during the husband's service in the Army, and the only mention of disability while in the Navy is an entry on the 30th day of May, 1864, showing that he was admitted to treatment for "syphilis secondary."
The widow's claim is still pending in the Pension Bureau.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 22, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 1542, entitled "An act granting a pension to John W. Reynolds."
The bill describes this beneficiary as being "late of the One hundred and fifty-seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry."
He filed a claim in 1872 that he was a deputy United States provost-marshal for the Twelfth Ohio district from October, 1864, to March, 1865, and that in December, 1864, while ascending a stairway to arrest two deserters who had been drafted, a barrel of cider was rolled down upon him, by which he was severely injured.
The claim having been rejected on the ground that the claimant was not entitled to a pension as a civil employee of the Government, he afterwards, and in January, 1888, informed the Bureau that he was drafted in November, 1864, while serving as assistant deputy provost-marshal, and was sworn in and reserved for home duty, and was discharged from the One hundred and fifty-first Ohio Volunteers. The records of the War Department show that John W. Reynolds served in the One hundred and fifty-first Ohio Regiment from May 2, 1864, to August 27, 1864.
It is perfectly apparent that this beneficiary was injured while acting as a deputy assistant provost-marshal, arresting deserters for the pay and rewards allowed him, and that his injuries were not at all connected with actual military service.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 22, 1888_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I return without approval House bill No. 2088, entitled "An act for the relief of W.S. Carpenter."
This bill appropriates the sum of $126.26 to be paid to the beneficiary named therein for his salary as an employee in the Railway Mail Service from the 3d day of October until the 20th day of November, 1882.
Mr. Carpenter was employed as a railway postal clerk at a salary of $800 per annum. He abandoned his route about the 2d day of October, 1882, without any leave of absence or explanation at the time, leaving his work in charge of one Jones, another railway postal clerk. He appears to have been paid for all the work he did, unless it be for two or three days in October, for which he apparently makes no claim.
There is nothing in the Post-Office Department showing that the absence of Carpenter was claimed to be on account of sickness, though there are a number of communications relating to the case.
The regulations of the Department permit the performance of the duties of a postal clerk by an associate in case of sickness, but never without the written permission of the division superintendent after an arrangement between the parties in writing, signed by them and filed with the superintendent.
Among a number of communications from Railway Mail Service officials relating to the conduct of Carpenter, all tending in the same direction, there is a letter from the chief clerk of the Railway Mail Service at Peoria, Ill., under whose immediate supervision Mr. Carpenter performed service, written to the superintendent of the sixth division of said service at Chicago, and dated November 16, 1882, containing the following statement:
I desire to call your attention to the case of W.S. Carpenter, Gilman and Springfield R.P.O., as follows: October 10 he was requested to appear at the post-office at Springfield, Ill., for examination on Illinois scheme. I went to Springfield for the purpose of examining him, but he failed to put in an appearance. Upon my return home I found a letter from him stating that he did not expect to remain in the service, hence his failure to report for examination; and, furthermore, that he would send in his resignation to your office by the first of the following week. This he had not done the 12th instant. He has not been on duty but two days since October 1. He left the run in charge of Mr. Jones, of the same line, telling him he did not know when he would return, and for Jones to keep up the run. He has no leave of absence, either verbally or otherwise. What his motives are for conducting himself in this manner I can not imagine. I have written him on the subject, but can not hear from him. When in Springfield the 3d instant, I requested the postmaster there to not pay Carpenter for October until he received notice to do so. I then notified you of the facts in the matter. I would respectfully recommend that Carpenter be relieved from further duty and a successor be appointed. He is of no account at the best; he has no interest in the work, and should be removed. I would also recommend that he be paid for but the two days' run in the month of October.
Four days after the date of this letter Mr. Carpenter was notified that an order had been issued discontinuing his pay and services.
These facts stated present the case of an employee of the Government abandoning his duties without leave or notice, in direct violation of rules, and claiming compensation for work done in his absence by another employee whose entire services were due the Government.
To allow a claim so lacking in merit would endanger discipline and invite irregularity and loose methods in a very important branch of the public service.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 27, 1888_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I return without approval House bill No. 2524, entitled "An act for the relief of Clement A. Lounsberry."
This bill appropriates the sum of $1,214.51 to reimburse him for clerk hire and fuel and lights in excess of allowances made to him by the Post-Office Department while he was postmaster at Bismarck, in the Territory of Dakota.
Seven hundred and fifty dollars of this sum is appropriated on account of clerk hire paid out from April 1, 1881, to June 30, 1882, and $464.51 for lights and fuel from July 1, 1883, to September 30, 1885.
As a general rule the allowances made by the Post-Office Department in these cases ought not to be interfered with. But sometimes a sudden rush of settlement in a locality, or some other cause, will so increase unexpectedly the need of clerks to distribute and handle the mails that the employment of more than have been provided for is absolutely necessary.
I am inclined to think the item for clerk hire in this bill should be so regarded. This was the only appropriation included in the bill presented in the Forty-eighth Congress in behalf of this postmaster upon which a favorable committee report was made and which was not unfavorably spoken of by the Department.