He is reported as present on all roll calls during his service.  He died April 7, 1867, of dropsy, never having made any application for a pension.

His widow filed an application for pension in 1880, thirteen years after the soldier’s death, alleging that the disease of which he died, claimed to be dropsy, was contracted in the service.

The claim was rejected by the Pension Bureau on the ground that the dropsy causing his death was not due to his military service, but that he was subject to the same before his enlistment.

I am perfectly satisfied that the rejection upon the ground claimed was correct.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 19, 1888.

To the Senate: 

I return without approval Senate bill No. 1957, entitled “An act granting a pension to Virtue Smith.”

The beneficiary named in this bill is the widow of David M. Smith (incorrectly named David W. Smith in the bill), who served as a bugler in a Minnesota regiment from August 22, 1862, to September 28, 1862, in a campaign against the Sioux Indians.

He received a gunshot wound in the right elbow, for which in 1867 he was granted a pension of $6 a month, which was very soon thereafter increased to $8, and in August, 1875, said pension was further increased to $10 a month, which he received to the date of his death.

He died in the city of Washington on the 22d day of January, 1880.

He obtained a position in the Second Auditor’s Office of the Treasury Department in 1864, and worked steadily there until about six months before his death.

Medical examinations had from time to time up to 1877 seem to have found him in excellent physical condition except the wound in his right elbow, which caused stiffness, and an injury to his left forearm not received in the Army.

In 1879 he was examined by a physician of this city who stands among the best in the profession, and found in the last stages of consumption, and this physician declares he died from that cause.  A female physician certified that the cause of death was “wounds in the Army.”

The pensioner was 64 years old at the time of his death.

I am perfectly satisfied from the medical testimony and from other facts connected with this case that the death of the husband of the beneficiary was in no manner related to his military service.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 22, 1888.

To the House of Representatives: 

I return without approval House bill No. 3016, entitled “An act granting a pension to Mary F. Harkins.”

The husband of this beneficiary was discharged from the military service in 1865, and was pensioned for a gunshot wound in the right foot at the rate of $6 per month.

He died in 1882, seventeen years after his discharge, “from rupture of the heart, caused by the bursting and parting of the fibers of the right ventricle.”