One Page Document Signed, February 7, 1881 with 1867 Resolution Reimbursing Him for Andersonville Records in Civil War by Atwater, Dorrance

One of the great injustices in American History is found in what happened to Dorrance Atwater who should have been a hero in the Post-Civil War era but instead was vilified and imprisoned by the Federal Government. During the Civil War, he was kept as a Yankee prisoner to work as a clerk in the Confederate administration of the horrendous hospital there as well as keeping record of the Union dead which disappeared after 1864. However, he managed to smuggle out the entire list of the 12000 dead as well as where they were buried copied date on shirts, etc.. He offered the list to the War Department but they microfilmed it and tabled it as unimportant. When he told Clara Barton about the list, she used her influence and he retrieved the original list. This was the single most important item on the Union dead in captivity. However, various features in the state department and Congress were irritated for his interference and he was arrested as having stolen the items he had preserved, sentenced to prison for eight months with two months of hard labor. (1) the printed document is an unrecorded offprint of a resolution from the General Assembly of New York which recognized his heroic work. He received a pardon from President Johnson in 1867 and the New York Assembly voted to return all his rights and vacate the fines placed upon him. (2) The signed note boldly signed by Dorrance Atwater authorizing a payment of $280.00 to Mrs. Cecile Horgues and attested to by James Terry of the American Museum of Natural History.