EXECUTIVE MANSION, _September 1, 1888_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I return without approval House bill No. 9363, entitled "An act granting
a pension to Edwin J. Godfrey."
The beneficiary named in this bill enlisted on the 27th day of May,
1861, in a New Hampshire regiment, and less than three months thereafter
was discharged on a surgeon's certificate of his disability occasioned
by "disease of heart existing prior to enlistment."
In 1881, twenty years after discharge, the beneficiary applied to the
Pension Bureau for a pension, and alleged that his disease of the heart
was the result of fatigue and overheating at Bull Run, Virginia, July
21, 1861.
If the heart disease of which the discharged soldier complained in 1861,
and which the claimant of a pension in 1881 alleged still continued,
could have been caused by fatigue and overheating in the only battle of
his brief service, it seems to me that its manifestations and symptoms a
month afterwards could not have been mistaken for such as belonged to a
much longer continuance of the disease.
I am fully satisfied that the surgeon was not mistaken who made the
certificate upon which the beneficiary was discharged, and that his
military service is not properly chargeable with any disability he may
have incurred.