Dorence Atwater had enlisted at the age of sixteen in the year 1862. He was now under twenty, but he was resolute in his determination that the lists which he had now recovered should not again be taken from him. On his return from Andersonville the rolls which he had made containing the names of missing soldiers disappeared. He was arrested and questioned, and replied that the rolls were his own property. He was sent to prison in the Old Capital, was tried by a court-martial, adjudged guilty of larceny, and sentenced to be confined for eighteen months at hard labor in the State Prison at Auburn, New York, fined three hundred dollars, and ordered to stand committed until the rolls were returned. Atwater made no defense, but issued a statement which Clara Barton probably prepared for him: I am charged with and convicted of theft, and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment, and after that time until I shall have paid my Government three hundred dollars. I have called no witnesses, made no appeal, adduced no evidence. A soldier, a prisoner, an orphan, and a minor, I have little with which to employ counsel to oppose the Government of the United States. Whatever I may have been convicted of, I deny the charge of theft. I took my rolls home with me that they might be preserved; I considered them mine; it had never been told or even hinted to me that they were not my own rightful, lawful property. I never denied having them, and I was not arrested for stealing my rolls, but for having declared my intention of appealing to higher authority for justice. I supposed this to be one of the privileges of an American citizen, one of the great principles of the Government for which we had fought and suffered; but I forgot that the soldier who sacrificed his comforts and risked his life to maintain these liberties was the only man in the country who would not be allowed to claim their protection. My offense consists in an attempt to make known to the relatives and friends the fate of the unfortunate men who died in Andersonville Prison, and if this be a crime I am guilty to the fullest extent of the law, for to accomplish it I have risked my life among my enemies and my liberty among my friends. Since my arrest I have seen it twice publicly announced that the record of the dead of Andersonville would be published very soon; one announcement apparently by the Government, and one by Captain James M. Moore, A.G.M. No such intimation was ever given until after my arrest, and if it prove that my imprisonment accomplishes that which my liberty could not, I ought, perhaps, to be satisfied. If this serves to bring out the information so long and so cruelly withheld from the people, I will not complain of my confinement, but when accomplished, I would earnestly plead for that liberty so dear to all, and to which I have been so long a stranger.