as many as half of the men killed in battle were not identified when they were buried. the records kept by each company were designed to keep track of how many men were in each unit, not to keep track of each soldier. confederate military records are much fewer than union records. when richmond fell in 1865, records were destroyed, shipped south or left behind. some of the records were kept by the union army and sent to the war department in washington, d.c.. the adjutant general started a bureau for the “collection, safekeeping, and publication of rebel archives” in july of 1865. in 1903, the secretary of war made an appeal to southern governors to lend the war department any confederate army records in their possession so they could be copied.