Very large numbers of buildings erected as hospitals, store- houses, officers, and barracks have already been sold, and others are now being advertised for sale. These sales. These sales are at public to the highest bidder. The materials generally bring fair prices, and a considerable sum will be realized from this source.

The Sixth Division of this office, which has charge of hospitals and barracks, is also with the records and reports of interments.

Under General Orders, Numbers 40, of July 3, 1865, which on the conclusion of the war called upon officers of this department for special reports of the number of interments registered during the war, reports have been received from officers in seventeen States, including the District of Columbia.

They report the interments registered in their offices at 116,148. Of these there were-whites, 95,803; colored, 20,345; loyal, 98,827; disloyal, 12,596; refugees, 600; contrabands, 4,125. These include few of the interments made immediately after battles, which are made by details of killed in battle.

These are the records of those who die in hospitals, camps, and barracks, for whose burial there is time to make decent and orderly provision under the general orders and regulations. They do not include the numerous victims of skirmishes and of assassination by bushwhackers and robbers under the guise of guerrillas, whose remains bleach by the waysides and in the woodland paths of the South. They do include, however, the 12,912 victims of the barbarities of Andersonville, Ga., and the 1,500 whose graves were marked this spring upon the battle-fields of Spotsylvania and the Wilderness.

The National Soldiers" Cemetery, at Arlington, continues to be used for the interment of the victims of the rebellion who die in Washington or its vicinity. it contains the remains of 5,291 persons. The cemetery at the Military Asylum contain 5,211; Harmony Cemetery 388; Battle Cemetery, 40; Alexandria Cemetery, 3,600. These cemeteries have been carefully tended and decorated. A cemetery has been constructed, under order of Major General G. H. Thomas, at Chattanooga, within the walls of which it is intended to collect the remains of all who fell in battle or died in the hospital in that vicinity.

Captain J. M. Moore, assistant quartermaster, was by your order, immediately upon the opening of communication, dispatched in a steamer leaded with materials, with workmen, and clerks to identify and mark in a suitable manner the graves of those who died at Andersonville. With the aid a detail furnished by Major- General Wilson this duty was performed.

The grounds in which 12,912 of our comrades had been buried in trenches were inclosed; the bodies where the earth had been washed from them by rains were again covered. Head-boards, painted white, were placed over each, bearing the name, rank, regiment, and State, with date of death, as ascertained from the captured hospital records.

Twelve thousand four hundred and sixty-one wore identified, and upon 451 graves Captain Moore was compelled to place the inscription "Unknown U. S. soldier." His report is herewith.

The names of those who have been interred in the military cemeteries of the District of Columbia and Washington have by your authority been published in a general order, which has been distributed to State authorities, public libraries, and to newspapers which publish official advertisements. The list is thus made accessible to the friends of those who have fallen.

16 R R-SERIES III, VOL V