EXECUTIVE MANSION, _June 2, 1886_.
_To the Senate_:
I return herewith without approval Senate bill No. 1726, entitled "An
act granting a pension to Augustus Field Stevens."
It appears that this claimant enlisted August 21, 1861, and was
discharged on the 3d day of October, 1861, after a service of less than
two months, upon a medical certificate of disability which represented
him as "incapable of performing the duties of a soldier because of
general debility, advanced age, unfit for service before entering."
His claim is not based upon any wound or injury, but he alleges that
he contracted chronic diarrhea or dysentery while in the service. The
committee to whom the bill was referred by the Senate admit that "there
is a quantity of contradictory testimony, biased in about equal
proportion for and against the claimant."
His claim was rejected by the Pension Bureau in 1882 and again in 1885,
after a special examination concerning the facts, on the ground that the
claimant had failed to show any pensionable disability contracted while
he was in the service.
The medical certificate upon which he was discharged makes no mention
of the disorders of which the applicant for pension now complains, but
contains other statements which demonstrate that no allowance should
be made to him by way of pension, unless such pension is to be openly
and confessedly regarded as a mere charity, or unless the medical
certificate made at the time of discharge, with the patient under
observation, is to be, without any allegation to that effect, impeached.
I am not prepared either to gratuitously set at naught two
determinations of the Pension Bureau, one very lately made after a
special examination, and especially when the evidence produced before
the committee to reverse the Bureau's action is admitted to be
"contradictory" and "biased in about equal proportion for and against
the claimant."