This is a little off the Alabama topic, but it does pertain to Alabama troops and our search for various records regarding them, I would suppose.

I have often wondered exactly what records were lost/destroyed at Richmond. Most all of us have heard the reports of records being burned in huge mounds outside the capital and other buildings. And many are said to have been lost in the April 1865 fire at the capital building.

There has recently been a show on the History Channel or Discovery that spoke of the recovery of the Confederate Constitution. I gentleman recovered it from a train in the Carolinas [I don't recall just where this was.] The Union Army had already set to destroying the rails and burning the train. He discovered a box that included the Constitution. Supposedly the train was full of the boxes of records from Richmond, and they had been dumped by the wayside. No report on what other records may have been recovered there, if any.

But, at any rate, it appears to me that few records are "missing", at least not in large volume. The more that I research, the more that I find still exist. All one needs do is consult the OR's and check the NARA microfilm to see how extensive the collection that survived the war. Add to this the thousands of documents being bought and sold on the open market, and it makes me wonder exactly what records were lost/destroyed from Richmond.

And this begs the question of exactly what was being burned and shipped out of Richmond?

It seems that the following records are pretty much intact (mostly with NARA):

Corresponsdence of Pres. Davis

Congressional records

Casualty lists of most/many battles

Records of the armies designated as the "Virginia Forces," which were mobilized by the State of Virginia at the outset of the War

Records of the Richmond Command Headquarters (including letters, telegrams, general orders, special orders, and endorsements)

Records of the subordinate Division of State Forces in and around Richmond (including letters, general orders, special orders, and morning reports)

CSN and CSS vessel papers; and naval and marine personnel records

Register of appointments of medical officers from 1861-1863; plus general reference records of Confederate medical officers from 1861-1865, records of medical officers from Virginia, 1861-1865, and List of medical officers, 1861-1864

And this is really just the tip of the iceberg. I guess my basic question is...what is missing? We've named one category of missing records: court martial records. Perhaps another is Confederate National court records...anybody know where these are?

Of course many muster rolls are missing, but I would think that these were lost in the field...not at Richmond.