From what he knew of his ancestor’s death, it seemed possible. Davis had read letters that said William — a color sergeant in the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, part of the Union Army’s famed Iron Brigade — died after being taken by ambulance for treatment.

Unfortunately for Davis, he may never find out.

Arlington Cemetery opens new section with Civil War burials
Army officials rejected requests from several families to conduct DNA testing that might have enabled their identification before reburying the remains as unknown soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery in September.
“The Army made the decision that the costs associated with obtaining, storing, and testing of the DNA from these two Unknown U.S. Soldiers was not justified due to the significant passage of time as the possibility of identifying comparator DNA is extremely unlikely,” a statement from Army officials at the cemetery says.

Davis said he finds the Army’s stance insulting.

“Don’t put someone in a box for eternity without their name if you have the ability to identify that person,” said Davis, 64, of Fort Myers, Florida.

Davis noted that the U.S. military has an entire department working to identify remains of service members, but the agency only investigates cases going back to World War II. He said he doesn’t understand why the military’s commitment comes with an apparent expiration date on older conflicts.

“There’s a covenant that exists between our country and our soldiers: If they’re lost, our country will try to find them, and if they’re found, our country will try to identify them,” Davis said. “When a soldier makes the ultimate sacrifice in battle for his country, when does the commitment to bring him home end?”

The 3rd Infantry Regiment, also known as the Old Guard, Caisson Platoon carry the remains of two unknown Civil War Union soldiers to their grave at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Thursday, Sept. 6, 2018. The soldiers were discovered at Manassas National Battlefield and will be buried in Section 81. Arlington National Cemetery opened the new section of gravesites with the burial. (Cliff Owen/AP)

This discovery was unusual, and accidental. Countless unidentified soldiers were buried where they fell during the Civil War. National Park Service policy is to leave their remains in place, considering battlefields to be hallowed ground.

These bodies were discovered in 2014 when workers digging to install a pipeline uncovered human bones. Researchers eventually found nearly a dozen severed limbs, along with two full sets of remains. They were able to conclude the soldiers were members of the Union Army, based on uniform buttons found in the pit and a bullet lodged in the one man’s femur, fired from a Confederate Enfield rifle.

The location corresponds with work done by surgeons in the battle’s aftermath, as the Union medical corps sent ambulances to collect the wounded and treat those left lying on the battlefield who could be saved, said Douglas Owsley, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution who examined the remains.

Owsley said he does not dispute the Army’s contention that DNA testing would be unlikely to identify the two individuals, because there could be many potential candidates with plausible claims like those put forward by Davis, given the large number of casualties at Second Bull Run.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency already has a $144 million budget and 600 staffers working to identify tens of thousands of remains, and typically identifies about 200 service members a year. Making an exception in Davis’ case could open the door to an even larger caseload by violating its firm rule against investigating pre-World War II conflicts.

The full story is here:  https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/11/04/no-answers-for-familys-questions-about-civil-war-unknowns/
I understand Mr. Davis’s desire to have closure on what happened to his relative, but frankly, there are many, many families whose missing members are already buried in graves marked “Unknown Confederate/Union Army Soldier”. There are two graves in my home town cemetery that have the “Unknown Confederate Soldier” on the headstones, and whose identities will never be discovered. My guess would be that they were prisoners at a Union POW camp, probably Camp Douglas in Chicago, IL, had escaped and were shot or found dead while trying to find their way home. They were at least given a decent burial.
I, too, have a missing relative, my great grandfather’s brother John, who disappeared on a courier run and was never accounted for. But this only follows other stories of families with missing members, which goes back into history so far, it’s impossible to describe the length of time. There have been archaeological finds in Europe of the aftermath of some great battle, such as one find in Germany in which bones were stacked and arranged in the shape of a sun cross. But there are no complete skeletal remains there, just bones that were probably scavenged by Nature’s cleaners and scattered afterwards. In the movie ‘Troy’, Agamemnon looks up at the sky and says “Good day for the crows”.  By that, he meant the dead would be dealt with by Nature and the scavengers.
Everybody has missing members. While I’d like to account for my missing great-uncle, after 150 years, it is history – his story, and theirs. So I’m inclined to let it go. And while I do understand Mr. Davis’s wish to account for his missing great-uncle, sometimes it is best to let sleeping soldiers lie.