Grover Cleveland

Veto Message

June 29, 1886

To the Senate:

I hereby return Senate bill No. 1797, entitled "An act granting a pension to John S. Kirkpatrick."

This claimant appears to have enlisted December 10, 1861, and to have been discharged December 20, 1864. He is borne upon the rolls of his company as present up to June, 1862; in July and August, 1862, as on detached service as hospital attendant, and so reported February 28, 1863. In March and April, 1863, he is reported as present, and in May and June, 1863, as on detached service. There is nowhere in his service any record of disability.

He filed his application for a pension in 1880, in which he alleged that from hardship and exposure on a long march in New Mexico in the month of December, 1862, he contracted varicose veins in his legs.

As I understand the record given above, this claimant was on detached service from July, 1862, to February, 1863.

It will be observed that his claim is that he contracted his disability within that time, and in December, 1863. He appears also to have served for two years after the date of his alleged injury, and that he did not file his application for pension till about sixteen years afterwards.

His claim is still pending, undetermined, in the Pension Bureau, and if there is merit in it there is no doubt that he will be able to make it apparent.

GROVER CLEVELAND

Grover Cleveland, Veto Message Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/204569

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