EXECUTIVE MANSION, _February 26, 1887_.
_To the Senate_:
I herewith return without approval Senate bill No. 2045, entitled "An
act granting a pension to Mrs. Sarah Hamilton."
Thomas Hamilton, the husband of the beneficiary named in this bill,
enlisted September 2, 1862. Upon the records he is reported present
to April 30, 1863; deserted May 27, 1863. His name is dropped from
subsequent rolls to February 29, 1864, when he is reported as a deserter
in arrest. He is not borne upon the rolls for March and April, 1864;
for May and June, 1864, he is reported absent in arrest; for July and
August, present under arrest; and for September and October, present for
duty. He was mustered out with his company May 24, 1865.
He applied for a pension in 1872, alleging that he received an injury to
his left leg about February 15, 1863, at St. Louis, by falling from a
ladder, causing varicose veins and stiffening of the leg.
He was granted a pension January 29, 1881, to commence May 25, 1865.
He subsequently applied for an increase of pension, claiming that
his eyes had become affected as a result of his varicose veins. This
application was rejected upon the ground that the disability for which
he was pensioned had not increased and that the disease of his eyes was
not a result of such disability.
The pensioner died April 22, 1883, twenty years after his alleged
injury, of cerebral apoplexy; and a physician states it as his judgment
that the varicosed condition of the venous system was primarily the
cause of his disabilities and death.
His widow filed an application for pension October 31, 1883, which was
rejected upon the ground that the soldier's death was not the result of
his military service.
Notwithstanding the record of the deceased soldier, stained as it is
with the charge of desertion, and the entire absence of any record proof
of sickness and injury, I should consider myself, in favor of his widow,
bound by the act of the Pension Bureau in allowing him a pension, and
should cheerfully aid her attempt to procure a pension for herself in
her needy condition, if I was not thoroughly convinced that her
husband's death had no relation to his military service or any injury
for which he was pensioned.
To the ordinary mind it seems impossible that apoplexy could result
from such a varicosed condition as is described in this case. I do not
understand that the physician who gives a contrary opinion bases his
judgment upon actual observation at the time the soldier died. The last
medical examination by the Pension Bureau before the soldier's death was
in October, 1882, and resulted in the following report of the examining
surgeon:
Weight, 180 pounds; age, 69 years; has varicose veins of left leg, but
not to such an extent as to increase the size of the leg or result in
marked disability; he is entirely blind in both eyes from glaucoma,
which does not in any degree, in my opinion, depend upon the pensioned
disability--varicose veins.
It appears that the benefit proposed by this bill can neither be
properly regarded as a gratuity, based upon the honorable service and
record of the soldier, nor predicated on his death resulting from a
disability incurred in such service.