EXECUTIVE MANSION, _June 22, 1886_.
_To the Senate_:
I return herewith without approval Senate bill No. 1192, entitled "An
act granting a pension to Alfred Denny."
It appears that the claimant entered the United States military service
as captain and assistant quartermaster of volunteers on the 12th day of
June, 1863. After remaining in such position for less than a year he
resigned to accept a civil position.
The short record of his military service discloses no mention of any
accident or disability. But twenty years after his resignation, and on
the 12th day of March, 1884, he reappears as an applicant for a pension,
and alleges in his declaration filed in the Pension Bureau that in
August, 1863, while in the line of duty, he was, by a sudden movement of
the horse he was riding, thrown forward upon the horn of his saddle and
thereby received a rupture in his right side, which at some time and in
a manner wholly unexplained subsequently caused a rupture in his left
side also.
The number of instances in which those of our soldiers who rode horses
during the war were injured by being thrown forward upon their saddles
indicate that those saddles were very dangerous contrivances.
I am satisfied there is not a particle of merit in this claim, and no
facts are presented to me which entitle it to charitable consideration.