The widow continued to receive the pension allowed her until June 17, 1869, when She was married to Henry T. Mowatt, which under the law terminated her pensionable right. It appears, however, that a small pension was allowed two minor children of the soldier at the time of their mother’s remarriage, which continued until 1876, more than seven years after such remarriage, when the youngest of said children became 16 years of age.
In 1878, nine years after he became the second husband of the beneficiary, Henry T. Mowatt died.
Though twenty-seven years have passed since the beneficiary ceased to be the widow of the deceased soldier, and though she has been the widow of Henry T. Mowatt for eighteen years, it is proposed by the bill under consideration to again place her name upon the pension roll “as widow of Alfred B. Soule, late major of the Twenty-third Regiment Maine Volunteers.”
Of course the propriety of the law which terminates the pension of a soldier’s widow upon her remarriage will not be questioned. I suppose no one would suggest the renewal of such pension during the lifetime of her second husband. Her pensionable relation to the Government as the widow of her deceased soldier husband, under any reasonable pension theory, absolutely terminated with her remarriage.
If she is to be again pensioned because her second husband does not survive her, the transaction has more the complexion of an adjustment of a governmental insurance on the life of the second husband than the allowance of a pension on just and reasonable grounds.
Legislation of this description is sure to establish a precedent which it will be difficult to disclaim, and which if followed can not fail to lead to abuse.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 20, 1896.
To the House of Representatives:
I return herewith without approval House bill No. 577, entitled “An act granting a pension to Lydia A. Taft.”
In 1858 the beneficiary named in this bill became the wife of Lowell Taft, who afterwards enlisted in the Union Army as a private in a Connecticut regiment and served from August, 1862, until June, 1865. The records of the War Department show that he was captured by the enemy June 15, 1863, and paroled July 14, 1863.
No application for a pension was ever made by him, though he lived until 1891, when he died at a soldiers’ home in Connecticut.
No suggestion is made that he incurred any disability in the service or that his death was in any manner related to such service.
In 1882, nearly twenty-four years after her marriage to the soldier and seventeen years after his discharge from the Army, the beneficiary obtained a divorce from him upon the grounds of habitual drunkenness and failure to afford her a support.
It is now proposed, five years after the soldier’s death, to pension as his widow the wife who was divorced from him at her own instance fourteen years ago.