EXECUTIVE MANSION, _July 17, 1888_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I return without approval House bill No. 8078, entitled "An act granting
a pension to Theresa Herbst, widow of John Herbst, late private Company
G, One hundred and fortieth Regiment of New York Volunteers."
John Herbst, the husband of the beneficiary named in this bill, enlisted
August 26, 1862. He was wounded in the head at the battle of Gettysburg,
July 2, 1863. He recovered from this wound, and on the 19th day of
August, 1864, was captured by the enemy.
After his capture he joined the Confederate forces, and in 1865 was
captured by General Stoneman while in arms against the United States
Government. He was imprisoned and voluntarily made known the fact that
he formerly belonged to the Union Army. Upon taking the oath of
allegiance and explaining that he deserted to the enemy to escape the
hardship and starvation of prison life, he was released and mustered out
of the service on the 11th day of October, 1865.
He was regularly borne on the Confederate muster rolls for probably nine
or ten months. No record is furnished of the number of battles in which
he fought against the soldiers of the Union, and we shall never know the
death and the wounds which he inflicted upon his former comrades in
arms.
He never applied for a pension, though it is claimed now that at the
time of his discharge he was suffering from rheumatism and dropsy,
and that he died in 1868 of heart disease. If such disabilities were
incurred in military service, they were quite likely the result of
exposure in the Confederate army; but it is not improbable that this
soldier never asked a pension because he considered that the generosity
of his Government had been sufficiently taxed when the full forfeit of
his desertion was not exacted.
The greatest possible sympathy and consideration are due to those who
bravely fought, and being captured as bravely languished in rebel
prisons.
But I will take no part in putting a name upon our pension roll which
represents a Union soldier found fighting against the cause he swore he
would uphold, nor should it be for a moment admitted that such desertion
and treachery are excused when it avoids the rigors of honorable capture
and confinement.
It would have been a sad condition of affairs if every captured Union
soldier had deemed himself justified in fighting against his Government
rather than to undergo the privations of capture.