"A Traitor at Arlington — How Did a Civil War Turncoat..." Topic

… End Up in America's Most Hallowed Cemetery?.

"TROOPS OF THE Independent Cavalry Brigade, 22nd Corps, Department of Washington, assembled on Ayr's Hill in Vienna, Virginia on Feb, 7, 1864 to witness the execution of Private William E. Ormsby, Company E, 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry.

Ormsby had deserted his post on Jan. 24, while on picket duty at Lewinsville, just three miles west of Washington D.C. Taking two horses and six pistols with him, he went to join up with Colonel John Mosby's Confederate Rangers. [1]

Little is known of Private Ormsby's background except that he was a member of the regiment's so-called California Battalion, companies that had been recruited in the Golden State. Allegedly, Ormsby had a relationship with a woman in Aldie, Virginia who had close ties to the Confederacy.

Determined to bring Orsmby back, brigade commander Colonel Charles Russell Lowell sent 60 troops of the 2nd Massachusetts after him. They ran into him and eight of Mosby's Rangers on Feb. 5 at Aldie Mill. Ormsby was captured by the men of his old unit, while the others got away. Lowell quickly convened a court martial the following day. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to die by firing squad…"
See here
link

Amicalement
Armand

- He was a deserter but he was still private in the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry.
- He was executed for desertion.
- Arlington was reserved for Union dead and when executed he was still a private in the Union army and so was buried there.

At the time Arlington was "just" a cemetery for Union army dead, not the hallowed ground into which it has morphed over the decades since.

Although as an Army veteran I do have qualms with a deserter being buried there. His grave should have been in the tidal lands without any marker whatsoever.

Jim