To the House of Representatives: 

I return without approval House bill No. 9363, entitled “An act granting a pension to Edwin J. Godfrey.”

The beneficiary named in this bill enlisted on the 27th day of May, 1861, in a New Hampshire regiment, and less than three months thereafter was discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of his disability occasioned by “disease of heart existing prior to enlistment.”

In 1881, twenty years after discharge, the beneficiary applied to the Pension Bureau for a pension, and alleged that his disease of the heart was the result of fatigue and overheating at Bull Run, Virginia, July 21, 1861.

If the heart disease of which the discharged soldier complained in 1861, and which the claimant of a pension in 1881 alleged still continued, could have been caused by fatigue and overheating in the only battle of his brief service, it seems to me that its manifestations and symptoms a month afterwards could not have been mistaken for such as belonged to a much longer continuance of the disease.

I am fully satisfied that the surgeon was not mistaken who made the certificate upon which the beneficiary was discharged, and that his military service is not properly chargeable with any disability he may have incurred.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 1, 1888.

To the House of Representatives: 

I return without approval House bill No. 5155, entitled “An act granting a pension to John S. Bryant.”

The man for whom this pension is proposed never, so far as I can learn, did a single day’s actual military service at the front, nor ever left in such service the State in which he was enlisted.

He enlisted December 7, 1863, in a Maine regiment; on the 16th day of the same month he is marked as a deserter, having failed to report after leave of absence; December 31, 1863, he is reported sick in hospital at Augusta, Me.; January 26, 1864, he is marked as having deserted from Camp Keyes, at Augusta, Me.

He was discharged January 14, 1865, for disability occasioned, as the surgeon’s certificate declares, “by a fall from a wagon while at home on a furlough, December 22, 1863.”  The certificate continues as follows: 

  Never has done a day’s duty.  Is utterly worthless and unfit for the
  Veteran Reserve Corps.

After his discharge the second charge of desertion was removed, and the first charge does not seem to be serious.  But he was injured while home on a furlough, his regiment still being in camp within the State of his residence; and although there are cases in which it seems not improper that pensions should be granted for injuries sustained during furlough and before actual return to duty, this does not appear to me to be one of them.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 6, 1888.

To the House of Representatives: