EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 4, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I herewith return without approval House bill No. 3551, entitled "An act
granting a pension to George W. Cutler, late a private in Company B,
Ninth New Hampshire Volunteers."
This claimant enlisted July 12, 1862, and was discharged June 22, 1863,
for disability resulting from "scrofulous ulceration of the tibia and
fibula of right leg; loss of sight of left eye."
He made a claim for pension in 1865, alleging an injury while loading
commissary stores, resulting in spitting of blood, injury to lungs, and
heart disease.
This claim was rejected August 31, 1865.
In 1867 he again enlisted in the United States infantry, and was
discharged from that enlistment March 29, 1869, for disability, the
certificate stating that--
He is unfit for military service by reason of being subject to bleeding
of the lungs. He was wounded, while in the line of his duty in the
United States Army, at Fredericksburg, Va., December 13, 1862. Said
wound is not the cause of his disability.
Afterwards, and in the year 1879, he filed affidavits claiming that he
was wounded by a minie ball at the battle of Fredericksburg, December
13, 1862, and was injured by falling down an embankment.
In 1883 he filed an affidavit in which he stated that the disability for
which he claims a pension arose from injuries received in falling down a
bank at Fredericksburg and being tramped on by troops, causing a
complication of diseases resulting in general debility.
The statement in the certificate of discharge from his second enlistment
as to the wound he received by a minie ball at Fredericksburg was of
course derived from his own statement, as it was related to a prior term
of service.
The records of the Adjutant-General's Office furnish no evidence of
wounds or injury at Fredericksburg.
The injury alleged at first as a consequence of loading commissary
stores seems to have been abandoned by the claimant for the adoption
of a wound at Fredericksburg, which in its turn seems to have been
abandoned and a fall down a bank and trampling upon by troops
substituted.
Whatever injuries he may have suffered during his first enlistment, and
to whatever cause he chooses at last to attribute them, they did not
prevent his reenlistment and passing the physical examination necessary
before acceptance.
The surgeon of the Ninth New Hampshire Volunteers, in which he first
enlisted, states that he remembers the claimant well; that he was
mustered and accepted as a recruit in spite of his (the surgeon's)
protest; that he was physically unfit for duty; that he had the
appearance of impaired health, and that his face and neck were marked by
one or more deep scars, the result, as the claimant himself alleged, of
scrofulous abscesses in early youth. He expresses the opinion that he is
attempting to palm off these old scars as evidence of wounds received,
and that if he had been wounded as he claimed he (the surgeon) would
have known it and remembered it.
It is true that whenever in this case a wound is described it is located
in the jaw, while some of the medical testimony negatives the existence
of any wound.
The contrariety of the claimant's statements and the testimony and
circumstances tend so strongly to impeach his claim that I do not think
the decision of the Pension Bureau should be reversed and the claimant
pensioned.