EXECUTIVE MANSION, _October 16, 1888_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I return without approval House bill No. 7657, entitled "An act granting
a pension to Mary Woodworth, widow of Ebenezer F. Woodworth."
The husband of this beneficiary enlisted October 1, 1861. On the rolls
of his company for May and June, 1862, he is reported as a deserter, and
the report is the same on the muster-out roll of his regiment, dated
October 24, 1864.
An effort was made on the application by the beneficiary for pension
to the Pension Bureau to attribute the charge of desertion to the
unfriendliness and injustice of the soldier's captain, and an
unsuccessful effort was made to have the charge removed from the record
by the Adjutant-General.
The soldier, therefore, is still recorded as a deserter from camp near
Farmington, Miss., since March 12, 1862.
The application of the widow to the Pension Bureau in 1867 states that
her husband was missing at Hamburg, Tenn., May 7, 1862, and not having
since been heard from is supposed to be dead.
The captain of the company testifies that the soldier was employed with
the ambulance corps, and that for misconduct he (the captain) ordered
him to his company and censured him; that very soon after that the
soldier was absent at roll call and was marked as absent without leave;
that in a day or two after that a member of a detail returned to camp
from Hamburg Landing and reported that he had seen the soldier there
and had been told by him that "he was off and would never go back."
Thereupon he was dropped from the roll as a deserter.
Various theories are presented to account for the soldier's absence in
other ways than by desertion, some of his comrades going so far as to
express the opinion that he was murdered at the instigation of his
captain. None of these theories, however, seem to be more than
conjectures with various degrees of plausibility.
If the question of desertion could be solved favorably to the
beneficiary, another difficulty immediately arises from the fact that
there is absolutely no proof of death except the soldier's long absence
without knowledge of his whereabouts; and if his death could be presumed
the cause of it and whether connected at all with military service are
matters regarding which we have no information whatever.
I am unable to see how a case in such a situation can be considered a
proper subject for favorable pension legislation.