exhumation impracticable

“Cold Harbor, Va. African Americans collecting bones of soldiers killed in the battle” (April 1865, Library of Congress)

Family and friends weren’t allowed to exhume the remains of soldiers in Virginia, especially if they had been dead less than a year.

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in 1865:

The Removal of Dead Soldiers from Virginia.

Colonal [sic] Edward W. Smith, Adjutant General of the Department, has given publicity to the following important order relative to the exhumation of the bodies of deceased soldiers. Relatives of the lamented men are constantly besieging the military authorities to permit the removal of bodies, without reference to the period of time they may have been in the ground. Refusals are now as constant as applications, owing to sanitary considerations, which are necessarily controlling in their nature. The order will attract very general attention. It is as follows: –

HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF VA.,
ARMY OF THE JAMES,
RICHMOND, VA., May 22, 1865.

The general commanding the department calls the attention of relatives and friends of deceased officers and men who are buried in Virginia to the fact that attempts to remove the remains of such officers and men, when they had been buried less than a year, have in every instance proved impracticable from the condition in which they were found.

By command of Maj. Gen. ORD.
ED. W. SMITH, A. Adjutant General.

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“Richmond, Virginia. Gen. Edward O.C. Ord, wife and child at the residence of Jefferson Davis. In the doorway is the table on which the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee was signed” (April 1865, Library of Congress)