GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _January 31, 1887_.
_To the Senate_:
I hereby return without approval Senate bill No. 2167, entitled "An act
granting a pension to Mrs. Margaret Dunlap."
By this bill it is proposed to grant a pension to the beneficiary
therein named as the mother of James F. Dunlap, who enlisted in the
Seventh Missouri State Militia Cavalry in 1862 and died in July, 1864,
of wounds received at the hand of a comrade.
The favorable action of the Senate upon this bill appears to be based,
so far as the cause of death is concerned, upon an affidavit contained
in the report of the committee to which the bill was referred, made
by one G. Will Houts, second lieutenant in the company to which the
deceased soldier belonged, in which the affiant deposes that some of
the comrades of the deceased being engaged in an affray he attempted
to separate the combatants, whereupon one of them, without cause or
provocation, stabbed the deceased in the breast, from which, in a few
days thereafter, he died; to which affidavit is added the finding of a
court-martial that the party inflicting the wound was found guilty of
manslaughter and sentenced to five years' imprisonment.
Upon this showing it might be difficult to spell out the facts that the
injury to the soldier was received in the line of duty or that any
theory of granting pensions covered the case.
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