I do not disagree at all with the idea that it was expediency that motivated the burial parties on both sides, and the idea that tired soldiers who were detailed to do the burials just wanted to get their terrible task over as fast as possible and may have done some jobs shoddy.

But if you read the thread on the Tennessee board you will see how this subject was first raised: by a poster who claimed that the mass graves at Shiloh showed a disgraceful treatment of the rebel dead. "Look what they did to our boys" etc.

This statement that the Shiloh graves were dishonorable was met with a non-hostile post that made the EXACT same point Doyle now makes here, (that expediency was the motivating factor in the burials not dishonor) but the post, although very similar to Doyle's here, was met with derision.

The point was also made that if ANY mass graves were deliberately meant to be insulting, Shiloh was not the place, but Fort Wagner might be. This comment was met then with the astonishing and VERY contradictory claim that the men of the 54th Massacusetts were considered as criminals not soldiers, but that their burial was JUST AS honorable and NO different than any other burial of any other soldiers in the war!

This is the heart of the issue that I have presented here now. A man can be buried as either a common criminal or as an honorable soldier, he cannot be considered as both. I am clearly asking one simple question: were Shaw and his men buried as honorable soldiers or as common criminals? It cannot be both. Expediency or method of burial is no longer the issue. My simple question can be answered with a single word. "Criminal" or "soldier"?

If the answer is "soldier" then expedient or not, the burial was meant to be honorable.

If the answer is "criminal" then their mass grave was meant to be a dishonor.

That was the point of my original post, and it has been danced around here mightily.