g the dead within the enemy's lines, who
consequently were never reported. When this letter is received it is
also registered in a book, endorsed and filed, and a summary of its
contents is sent to Mrs. James, with the intimation that further
particulars of interest to her can be learned by addressing James
Miller, of Keokuk, Iowa.

Soon after entering fully upon this work in Washington, and having
obtained the rolls of the prison hospitals of Wilmington, Salisbury,
Florence, Charleston, and other Rebel prisons of the South, Miss Barton
ascertained that Dorrance Atwater, a young Connecticut soldier, who had
been a prisoner at Andersonville, Georgia, had succeeded in obtaining a
copy of all the records of interments in that field of death, during his
employment in the hospital there, and that he could identify the graves
of most of the thirteen thousand who had died there the victims of Rebel
cruelty.

Atwater was induced to permit Government officers to copy his roll, and
on the representation of Miss Barton that no time should be lost in
putting up head-boards to the graves of the Union Soldiers, Captain
James M. Moore, Assistant Quartermaster, was ordered to proceed to
Andersonville with young Atwater and a suitable force, to lay out the
grounds as a cemetery and place head-boards to the graves; and Miss
Barton was requested by the Secretary of War to accompany him. She did
so, and the grounds were laid out and fenced, and all the graves except
about four hundred which could not be identified were marked with
suitable head-boards. On their return, Miss Barton resumed her duties,
and Captain Moore caused Atwater's arrest on the charge of having stolen
from the Government the list he had loaned them for copying, and after a
hasty trial by Court-Martial, he was sentenced to be imprisoned in the
Auburn State Prison for two years and six months. The sentence was
immediately carried into effect.

Miss Barton felt that this whole charge, trial and sentence, was grossly
unjust; that Atwater had committed no crime, not even a technical one,
and that he ought to be relieved from imprisonment. She accordingly
exerted herself to have the case brought before the President. This was
done; and in part through the influence of General Benjamin F. Butler,
an order was sent on to the Warden of the Auburn Prison to set the
prisoner at liberty, Atwater subsequently published his roll of the
Andersonville dead, to which Miss Barton pre