During the last year of the War, I became aware from letters received from various parts of the country, that a very large number of our soldiers had disappeared from view without leaving behind them any visible trace or record.… The heart-broken friends appealed to me for help, and by the aid of surviving comrades, I gained intelligence of the fate of nearly one half the number of [80,000] soldiers.… [These were men] who fell in the stern path of duty on the lonely picket line, perhaps, or [were] wounded, and left in some tangled ravine to perish alone, under the waters in some dark night,
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