Veto Message

To the House of Representatives:

I return herewith without approval House bill No. 3205, entitled "An act granting a pension to George W. Guyse."

The claimant filed his declaration for a pension in 1878, alleging that about the 25th day of December, 1863, he received a gunshot wound in his left knee while engaged in a skirmish.

There has been much testimony taken in this case, and a great deal of it is exceedingly contradictory. Three of the claimant's comrades, who originally testified to the receipt of the injury by him, afterwards denied that he was wounded in the service, and a portion of the evidence taken by the Bureau tends to establish the fact that the claimant cut his left knee with a knife shortly after his discharge.

An examining surgeon in November, 1884, reports that he finds "no indication of a gunshot wound, there being no physical or rational signs to sustain claimant in his application for pension."

He further reports that there "seems to be an imperfect scar near the knee, so imperfect as to render its origin uncertain, but in no respect resembling a gunshot wound."

I think upon all the facts presented the Pension Bureau properly rejected this claim, because there was no record of the injury and no satisfactory evidence produced showing that it was incurred in service and in line of duty, "all sources of information having been exhausted."

GROVER CLEVELAND