Private William Thomas Overby (April 1840 – 23 September 1864)
43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, C.S.A
Front Royal, Virginia
23 September 1864.
"Captured with five others in a skirmish outside Front Royal, Private Overby and his compatriots, instead of receiving humane treatment accorded prisoners of war, were ordered executed. Reviled and beaten by his captors, Private Overby could only watch as three of his fellow prisoners were wrenched away, dragged through the streets, and summarily shot. Knowing he had no chance against such a mob, Private Overby nevertheless remained erect and defiant. Despite a noose around his neck, he refused to give information that could compromise his battalion – even in exchange for his life --- instead, with his last words, issued a dark prophecy of revenge."
Gregg S. Clemmer, Valor in Gray: The Recipients of the Confederate Medal of Honor, p. 63.
Richardson did so, pointing out two mounds that he claimed were where Colonel Slocum and Major Ballou had been buried. Soldiers began to dig amid the thickets of huckleberry bushes, the still graveyard echoing with the sound of shovels as the men went about their morose task.
Under the direction of Walter Coleman, Sprague's secretary, the assemblage commenced with the exhumation of Slocum and Ballou. Just then a young black girl, full of curiosity, made her way from a nearby cabin to investigate. She approached the diggers and inquired if they were looking for 'Kunnel Slogun'? If so, she said, they were too late and would not find him.
She went on to recite a chilling tale, claiming that a number of men from the 21st Georgia Regiment had robbed the grave several weeks prior. They had dug up Slocum, severed his head from his body and burned the mutilated corpse in an attempt the remove the flesh and procure the bones and skull as trophies. His coffin had been thrown into the creek, only to be later used in another burial.
Horrified, Sprague demanded to see evidence of such an atrocity. Followed by most of the anxious but skeptical group, he accompanied the girl as she led them to a nearby hollow, where they found a heap of charred embers along the bank of the creek. The ash was still gray, denoting that it was only a few weeks old. There they found what appeared to be bones. Upon closer inspection, Surgeon James B. Greeley of the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry identified a human femur, vertebrae and portions of pelvic bones. Nearby they found a soiled blanket with large tufts of human hair folded inside.
As the troopers carefully collected the terrible evidence, one noticed a white object in the branches of a tree along the creek bank. A horse soldier waded into the stream and recovered two shirts, one a silk and the other a striped calico, both buttoned at the collar and unbuttoned at the sleeves. The circumstantial evidence seemed to concur with what the little girl had told Sprague, and it seemed even more plausible when Greeley did not locate a human skull or teeth with the other remains.
To add to an already confused, strange situation, Sprague insisted that he recognized both shirts as having belonged to Major Ballou — not to Slocum. Private Richardson, who had nursed Ballou in his last moments a week after the battle, concurred. With the identity of the beheaded body now in question, the anxious group rushed back to the gravesite. The troopers still had not found anything in the first grave. To probe for a solid object, Greeley suggested running a saber blade deeper into the ground. One was handed forward and thrust into the soft, mud-soaked soil. Driven almost to the hilt, it met with no resistance. The grave was empty.
The same tactic was applied to the other grave, but with different results, as a hard object was soon struck. Several cavalrymen began to dig, and they uncovered a rectangular box buried no more than 3 feet deep. The box was pulled from the grave, and the lid was pried off to reveal the body of 37-year-old John Slocum, rolled up in a blanket. Easily identifiable by his distinctive red, bushy mustache, Slocum's remains were surprisingly intact. It now appeared that the missing body was that of Ballou.
To gather further evidence, Sprague, in company with his aide and Lt. Col. Willard Sayles of the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry, went to the homes of nearby residents. In the process they met a 14-year-old boy who claimed to have witnessed the awful deed, and verified that it was soldiers from the 21st Georgia Infantry who had carried it out. The boy went on to reveal that the plot was premeditated, and that the Georgians had planned it for several days. He also claimed that the Rebels tried to burn the corpse, but had to prematurely dowse the fire because of the horrible stench it emitted. A farmer by the name of Newman confirmed the boy's story, contending that no Virginian would have done such a thing and that those responsible were from a Georgia regiment.
Sprague also talked to a woman who had nursed the wounded at Sudley Church after the battle. She claimed that she had pleaded with the Georgians to leave the dead at peace. Unable to persuade them, she had saved a lock of hair cut from Ballou's head, in the hopes that someday someone might come to claim the body. Colonel Coleman took the lock of hair, promising he would return it to Ballou's wife.
The rationale for such a desecration did not come from the battle. The 8th Georgia Infantry was the only regiment from that state that may have come into contact with the 2nd Rhode Island, and the 21st Georgia did not arrive at Manassas until after the battle, staying in winter quarters in the neighborhood of Sudley Church.
Perhaps the men of the 21st saw their actions as a misguided attempt to revenge the 8th Georgia's losses at the hand of the 2nd. While in search of Slocum they uncovered both graves — Slocum in a simple box and Ballou in a coffin. Thinking the commanding officer must be buried in the coffin, they inadvertently mutilated the body of Ballou — not Slocum.
At first light, Sprague and Greeley ventured into a nearby field to investigate the skeletal remains of a horse, which Sprague supposedly recognized as one that had been shot out from under him during the battle. Meanwhile back at the house, the exhumation of Levi Tower was underway. The mass grave revealed eight bodies, including Tower's. Strangely, all of the men were found buried face down and barefooted, together with an unexploded shell, considered a blatant sign of disrespect by all present.
As the Federals dug away, a growing number of irregularly clad men had begun to gather on a nearby ridge. Fearing an ambush by guerrillas, the officers elected to return to Washington. The corpses were loaded into the wagons. Slocum's and Tower's remains had been placed in pine coffins, each marked with the appropriate name and date of disinterment. Ballou's casket was filled only with charred ash, bone, the blanket that contained his tufts of hair and the two recovered shirts. After collecting souvenirs from the area, the troopers mounted and the party departed Bull Run with a greater sense of the terrible realities of war.
The congressional committee's investigation unearthed further testimony of grave desecration. A local Manassas woman, Mrs. Pierce Butler, testified that she had witnessed several instances of unidentified Confederates exhuming bodies with the intention of boiling off the remaining skin and removing the bones as relics. Butler even claimed to have heard one soldier of New Orleans' Washington Artillery boast as he carried off a dug-up skull that he intended to 'drink a brandy punch out of it the day he was married.' On April 30 the committee officially concluded that soldiers of the Confederate Army had indeed performed such actions after the First Battle of Bull Run.
Point is - there were miscreants on both sides - and plenty of evidence that both sides did actually commit these atrocities. Notice, I didn't use the term soldiers - as that would be an insult to those that deserved the title.
I just hit 'edit', thank goodness for that option. I didn't mean that one, I was speaking about Private Barbee. The other enterprising fellow is astonishing in his own way! Sounds a little like a movie you'd never believe if you saw it, doesn't it? Real life is frequently that way.
Bringing the