Dorence Atwater

One morning in July 1863, Atwater was exercising his horse in the woods when he was captured by two Confederates disguised in Yankee uniforms. The Battle of Gettysburg had just occurred, and a new prison named Camp Sumter in southwest Georgia, known to the prisoners as Andersonville and to Atwater as "hell itself", had just opened. Andersonville had a quota of 400 prisoners a day. The Confederates picked up Atwater on their way through Richmond, Virginia, and he was among the first prisoners to be marched to Andersonville.

Atwater was ill when he arrived and was put into the prison hospital. Upon his recovery, his handwriting was discovered again and he was given the task of keeping the "Death List", a register of those who had died at the camp. He was ordered to produce two copies, one for the Confederates and one which, he was told, would go to the United States federal government. He suspected the Union would never see this copy and decided to keep his own list, hidden among the papers of the ones belonging to the Confederates. All the while, Atwater knew that if the prison leader, Captain Henry Wirz, discovered what he was doing, he would be hanged.[1][2]

Atwater, c. 1870

When Atwater was released from Andersonville, the death list was completed. He dropped the huge list into his cotton laundry bag and walked through the Confederate lines with it.

Shortly after Atwater arrived home, he pulled the Andersonville death list out of his bag and showed it to his father and siblings. There had been rumors that he had folded it and slipped it in the inner pocket of his coat. But as his brother Richard wrote, “First, the Union coats had no inside pockets, second, Dorence had no coat, and third, the huge, thick list was not folded.” Two days later, Atwater came down with diphtheria, typhoid, and scurvy. People rarely survived even one of these diseases, but Atwater did. Three weeks later, he was thin and weak but on the mend. He had just received a telegram requesting him to come to Washington, D.C. and bring the list. On the train there, word reached him that President Abraham Lincoln had been shot and was dying. Washington, D.C. was in chaos, and Atwater was still quite weak. A telegram then came from home notifying him that his father, who had nursed him through his illnesses, had diphtheria and was also dying. Atwater returned home at the first opportunity. His father died that night.

After handling the funeral, Atwater returned to Washington to begin work as an intern. He was barely 20 years old. There he met Clara Barton, who had the means to mark the Andersonville graves but no names with which to mark them; Atwater told her what she needed to know. This meeting began a lifelong friendship between Atwater and Barton.

Atwater took the death list and traveled with Barton, Dr. James Moore, and 42 headboard carvers to mark the graves of the soldiers who had died at Andersonville. Upon his return to Washington, D.C., he refused to reveal where his list was and was taken to be court-martialed. Barton consulted with President Andrew Johnson and Atwater received a general pardon. He later trained to be the U.S. Consul to the Seychelles Islands. The death list was eventually published by the federal government and reprinted by the New York Times.