EXECUTIVE MANSION, _June 12, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 1017, entitled "An act
granting a pension to Stephen Schiedel."
The beneficiary named in this bill served in the First Regiment Missouri
Light Artillery from October 24, 1861, to October, 1864. There is no
record of any injury or disability while in the service.
In March, 1880, sixteen years after his discharge, he filed an
application for a pension, alleging that about June, 1862, while
carrying logs to aid in building quarters, a log slipped and fell upon a
lever, which flew up and struck him, injuring his back and shoulder.
He furnished the testimony of two witnesses tending to support his
statement of the manner in which he was injured, but upon investigation
this evidence was found to be unreliable.
Medical examinations failed to disclose any disability from the cause
alleged, but do tend to show that he was disabled since his discharge by
an injury to his right hand and arm and some rheumatic trouble.
It is not claimed that he incurred any disability from rheumatism while
in the Army. It appears distinctly that he was wounded in the right
wrist and arm while firing a cannon at the village of Hamburg, Erie
County, N.Y., on the 4th day of July, 1866. The doctor who testifies to
this injury and who dressed the wound negatives any other illness before
the accident.
Even if he has, since his discharge, suffered from rheumatism, he does
not claim that this was incurred in the Army. He bases his right to a
pension entirely upon an injury which he particularly describes, and
which the medical examination does not sustain. It will be observed,
too, that he continued his military service for two years and four
months after the date of his alleged injury. It seems hardly possible
that he could have done this if he had been injured in the manner he
alleges.