From Hell To Paradise

By Thomas P. Lowry · Originally published May 2017 · pp. 14–15

The Civil War was an extraordinary time, filled with extraordinary stories, and few were more extraordinary than that of Dorence Atwater. In 1864 he was at Andersonville prison, digging a shelter with a bent spoon. Later in 1864, he was at another Confederate prison, digging another shelter with the same spoon, just thinner and sicker. Early in 1865, he was freed; by late 1865, he was in a new prison, New York’s Auburn Prison, sent there by a Federal court-martial so astonishing in its cynicism, duplicity, and meanness, as be a creation of Edgar Allen Poe wedded to Franz Kafka. The Wheel of Fate turned again; in 1868 he was U.S. Consul to the Seychelles, receiving a Federal salary in a tropical paradise. Twenty-four months later he had the consulship at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti, where he soon married a princess of the royal family of Tahiti and acquired a large plantation, pearl fisheries, and a fleet of schooners. A heavy sheaf of War Department and State Department records from our National Archives, plus French colonial records from Papeete document every step of his journey. Atwater was a true Connecticut Yankee, the product of four generations of Atwaters in the little town of Terryville. At age sixteen this store clerk, who had never owned a horse, and perhaps never ridden one, enlisted in the Connecticut Squadron of Cavalry, which soon merged with the 2nd New York Cavalry. They served all over northern Virginia in the years before Gettysburg. On July 4, 1863 he was carrying messages for Col. Judson Kilpatrick when he was captured by Confederates wearing Federal uniforms. He joined over 5,000 Yankee prisoners walking from Pennsylvania to Richmond, Va.

His first stop was Belle Isle, a desolate island in the James River. He faced starvation and broiling heat in summer; starvation and deadly cold in winter. In a stroke of luck, during November 1863 he was transferred to the warmth of Smith’s Tobacco Factory in Richmond and made a clerk, based on his fine handwriting. He was so trusted that his inventory work resulted in the conviction of a larcenous Confederate officer. His luck was short lived. In early 1864, a prison officer was ordered to bring 400 prisoners to a train bound for Andersonville. A head count yielded only 399. Atwater was jerked out of bed to round out the required 400. Ten days later he arrived at that infamous vale of death. Again, his handwriting changed his circumstances. He was assigned to the prison’s chief doctor to keep a roster of the dead, not an easy task since on a normal day fifty corpses arrived, one every six minutes, to be recorded, then buried in a mass grave. Atwater noted each man’s last name, first initial, regiment, company, date of death, cause of death and grave marker number. As he bent over his ledger scratching away, he noted the doctor’s hatred of Yankees and concluded that such a list would never reach the prisoner’s grieving families. Atwater doubled his output. The first three minutes entered the Confederate ledger; the next three minutes placed the same data on a secret list which he concealed in the lining of his coat. About six months later, as Sherman’s March to the Sea approached, Atwater and 16,000 other men were transferred to an equally dreadful hellhole at Florence, S.C. In March 1865, when he finally arrived home in Connecticut he still had his list, which he showed to Clara Barton. She knew her way around Washington’s political scene and persuaded Secretary of War Stanton to send an expedition to Andersonville, to properly mark the graves. In July1865 they arrived with 95,000 board feet of wood, 2,600 pounds of white lead, kegs of nail, dozens of brushes, and a handful of painters and letterers, and Atwater and Clara Barton. They also had some lists. The issue of lists will be salient, and very confusing. By now there seemed to be three lists. The first had been captured at Andersonville by Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson’s cavalry; this is the Wilson List. The second was Atwater’s list that had been concealed in his coat, which we will call the Hidden List. The third list, probably a copy of the Hidden List, is usually termed the Original Copy or the Breck List. While Atwater was still with the grave markers at Andersonville, a messenger from the War Department arrived, demanded the Original Copy, and returned north. What is shocking, and will become more so, is that the War Department had at least one of these lists for almost six months, yet had made no effort to notify families of their loved one’s fates. In August 1865, Atwater was back home and about to meet an enemy who would haunt him for life and even after death. This was Brevet Brigadier General Samuel Breck, an AAG (assistant adjutant general), a paper pushing bureaucrat. Almost as soon as Atwater was out of the Confederate prison system Breck had demanded that Atwater, then sick with diphtheria and malaria, and almost certainly sick with POW-acquired scurvy, pellagra, hookworm, and beri beri, come to Washington, D.C., and bring his list. Atwater, then a civilian, obeyed. Breck now had access to every copy of the list of dead prisoners. He offered to buy Atwater’s Hidden List. Atwater said he wanted it published for the families of the missing. Breck offered payment and a chance to use the list, if Atwater would re-enlist. Having little choice, he re-joined the army; however, he kept a copy of his original list. In a series of confusing confrontations, Breck demanded any and all lists, and the return of enlistment money. Atwater refused, was arrested, and was put in prison within hours. A few days later he was court-martialed. The verbatim court transcripts in the National Archives are full of contradictory and confusing statements, with lists being given different names that vary from one witness to the next. Breck not only claimed the government’s right to every list, whatever its origin, but described his “disgust” at Atwater’s wish to “get rich” from the list, a completely baseless charge. It was evident that Breck and the War Department had no intention of notifying the grieving families. The young man who had suffered at Andersonville and Florence was now labeled a criminal, convicted of larceny, and sentenced to eighteen months at hard labor. Further, he would not be released until he returned the money he had been paid and returned the list that he kept. He had no friends in the Federal bureaucracy or in prison. He did have friends outside: Clara Barton, Gen. Benjamin Butler, Horace Greeley and a host of outraged Connecticut politicians. After two months of behind-the-scenes agitation, Stanton ordered Atwater released. Not pardoned; just out of prison.. He brought the secreted copy to the New York Tribune where, after forty days and forty nights of non-stop type-setting, a special edition with all 12,000 names appeared on the streets. Greeley charged twenty-five cents a copy, his actual cost, and Atwater received not one penny, destroying Breck’s assertions that Atwater was a moneygrubbing war profiteer. The first edition sold out within hours and several re-printings were needed to satisfy the demand. The list was arranged by state, then alphabetically within each state. The first pages feature a brief note by Atwater and a 4,000word essay by Clara Barton. (Facsimiles can be purchased now at the Andersonville Historic Site.) His magnum opus complete, Atwater turned to his own needs and prepared a memorial, more like a legal brief, to Congress. Rep. Robert S. Hale, who reviewed the case, told his colleagues that the court-martial was “…a case of the grossest and most monstrous cruelty and injustice that ever oppressed any human being.” Congress sent its report to President Johnson, who passed it on to Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, whose lengthy and waffling report recommended a pardon. Breck’s superior, Adjutant General Townsend was furiously opposed to a pardon and referred the case back to Johnson, who did nothing. Thirty years later, Atwater still stood convicted. Before the Civil Service Merit System, Federal jobs were based on who knew who. Atwater’s friends began calling in favors. In the 1867 United States Official Register we see the result, “Dorence Atwater, consul, Seychelles, compensation 1,500.” The Seychelles, an island chain 800 miles east of Kenya, were then under British control. In an average year, four American ships visited these islands. Atwater’s duties were to provide whatever assistance the American captains required. The twelve Americans living in Mahé, the capital, wrote the State Department that Atwater was too cozy with the British but his defenders, 12,000 miles away in Washington, D.C., interceded so that in 1868 Atwater was named as consul to the Society Islands, Tahiti. The average American’s mental picture of Tahiti is a mish-mash of naked Polynesian girls, travel brochures, and languid living, in a paradise of mangoes and coconuts. In reality, the Polynesian archipelago had seen centuries of tribal warfare. When the Europeans had reached Tahiti, Captain Cook had aided one faction with muskets. The result was that, one tribal chief, Tu, became King Pomare I. His son, Pomare II, was deposed but returned, only to die in 1821. Pomare III died shortly after that and his sister became Pomare IV, or Queen Pomare. Her son, Pomare V, married Joanna Marauta’aroa Tepa’ oSalmon, the daughter of Alexander Salmon, a Jewish banker who had married a royal princess, Arii’itaimai. Alexander Salmon was a talented businessman who had grown wealthy with orange, vanilla, and cocoa plantations, and a schooner fleet to take produce to the Gold Rush city of San Francisco. That family history is confusing, but linked to Dorence Atwater, who also possessed an entrepreneurial spirit. When Salmon died suddenly of dysentery, he left nine children. One daughter, Arii’ino’ore Moetia Tepau Salmon (1848-1935) became the bride of Dorence Atwater. In Western terminology, he married a princess. Atwater also tended to his consular duties while becoming a successful entrepreneur. He was soon the owner of productive plantations, pearl fisheries, and even a steamship line. From 1895 to his death in 1910, he and his princess bride lived in San Francisco, managing their businesses at a distance. When his heart stopped beating, he was embalmed and, as an honor guard of Union veterans saluted him, sailed through the Golden Gate for the last time. In Tahiti, he was given a royal funeral, as befit his status. A stele marks his grave in the suburb of Papara. Death did not end the story. Four years after his death, the German armored battle cruiser Scharnhorst bombarded Papeete, destroying most of Mrs. Atwater’s property. Reduced to near poverty, she applied for a Civil War widow’s pension in 1916. Even with active intercession by her attorney, it took four years to have her application approved. The pension bureau doubted her well-documented marriage. Then they made her prove that Dorence was not already married when he joined the cavalry at age sixteen. Could these vindictive delays have been the work of Samuel Breck who, thirty-five years after Dorence’s court-martial, still declared that the guilty verdict and the prison sentence were fully justified. An open-minded review of every document suggests that Dorence Atwater, an American hero, was persecuted by bureaucrats of his own government and found his apotheosis in a different land, a different culture, and a different language.