The report of the committee closes with the statement that—­

In view of the long and faithful service and high character of the claimant and the well-established facts that claimant was a stout and able-bodied man, free from any and all disease when he enlisted, and that by reason of his faithful service to his country and the great suffering and hardship through which he passed while in said service his health was permanently destroyed, the committee earnestly recommend the passage of the bill.

The records of the War Department show that the claimant enlisted October 25, 1861, and that on the muster-in roll of his company dated December 10, 1861, he is reported as present; that on the roll dated December 31, 1861, he is reported as absent without leave; that on the roll for January and February, 1862, he is reported as deserted; that he is not borne on subsequent rolls until that for November, 1864, when he is reported as gained from desertion; he was mustered out with his company January 31, 1865, and the records offered no evidence of disability; that in his claim for pension, filed in 1881, he alleges that he contracted piles in the winter of 1863.

In a subsequent statement he alleges that this date is erroneous, and that his disability was contracted in October, 1864, and that he believes it was the result of his having diarrhea for about twelve months prior to that date, contracted while he was being carried from place to place as a prisoner, he having been tried by a court-martial in May, 1862, for desertion and sentenced to imprisonment until the expiration of his term of enlistment.

Thus it quite plainly appears that this claimant spent the most of his term of enlistment in desertion or in imprisonment as a punishment of that offense; and thus is exhibited the “long and faithful service and the high character of the claimant” mentioned as entitling him to consideration by the committee who reported favorably upon this bill.

I withhold my assent from this bill because, if the facts before me, derived from the army records and the statements of the claimant are true, the allowance of this claim would, in my opinion, be a travesty upon our whole scheme of pensions and an insult to every decent veteran soldier.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 4, 1887.

To the House of Representatives: 

I return herewith without approval House bill No. 8150, entitled “An act granting a pension to Jesse Campbell.”

The claim for a pension made by the beneficiary named in this bill to the Pension Bureau, and rejected in 1881, was reopened upon further proof in January, 1887, and the claimant was ordered before a board of examining surgeons, upon which a report has not yet been made.

Inasmuch as the only ground for the rejection of his claim was the nonexistence of pensionable disability from the cause he alleged, and in view of the fact that he now alleges a different disability, which the new evidence seems to support, there is no doubt that justice will be done the claimant under the general law.