Arlington national cemetery why was it built

A simple pine headboard, painted white with black lettering, identified his grave, like the markers for Pvt. William H. McKinney and other soldiers too poor to be embalmed and sent home for burial. The indigent dead soon filled the Lower Cemetery—a name that described both its physical and social status—across the lane from a graveyard for slaves and freedmen.

The next month, Meigs moved to make official what was already a matter of practice: "I recommend that Meigs proposed devoting acres to the new graveyard. He also suggested that Christman and others recently interred in the Lower Cemetery should be unearthed and reburied closer to Lee's hilltop home. Loyalist newspapers applauded the birth of Arlington National Cemetery, one of 13 new graveyards created specifically for those dying in the Civil War.

Touring the new national cemetery on the day that Stanton signed his order, Meigs was incensed to see where the graves were being dug. To enforce his orders—and to make Arlington uninhabitable for the Lees—Meigs evicted officers from the mansion, installed a military chaplain and a loyal lieutenant to oversee cemetery operations, and proceeded with new burials, encircling Mrs.

Lee's garden with the tombstones of prominent Union officers. The first of these was Capt. Albert H. Packard of the 31st Maine Infantry. Shot in the head during the Battle of the Second Wilderness, Packard had miraculously survived his journey from the Virginia front to Washington's Columbian College Hospital, only to die there. On May 17, , he was laid to rest where Mary Lee had enjoyed reading in warm weather, surrounded by the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine. By the end of , some 40 officers' graves had joined his.

Meigs added others as soon as conditions allowed. He dispatched crews to scour battlefields for unknown soldiers near Washington.

Then he excavated a huge pit at the end of Mrs. Lee's garden, filled it with the remains of 2, nameless soldiers and raised a sarcophagus in their honor. He understood that by seeding the garden with prominent Union officers and unknown patriots, he would make it politically difficult to disinter these heroes of the Republic at a later date.

The last autumn of the war produced thousands of new casualties, including Lt. John Rodgers Meigs, one of the quartermaster's four sons. Lieutenant Meigs, 22, was shot on October 3, , while on a scouting mission for Gen. Philip Sheridan in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. He was returned with solemn honors to Washington, where Lincoln, Stanton and other dignitaries joined his father for the funeral and burial in Georgetown.

The loss of his "noble precious son" only deepened Meigs' antipathy toward Robert E. Lee avoided the spectacle of a trial. Treason charges were filed against him but quietly dropped, almost certainly because his former adversary, Grant, interceded on Lee's behalf with President Andrew Johnson. Settling in Lexington, Virginia, Lee took over as president of Washington College, a struggling little school deep in the Shenandoah Valley, and encouraged old comrades to work for peace.

Mary Lee felt a growing outrage. The graves "are planted up to the very door without any regard to common decency Her husband, however, kept his ambitions for Arlington hidden from all but a few advisers and family members. Smith, Lee's trusted legal adviser in Alexandria. To his elder brother Smith Lee, who had served as an officer in the Confederate navy, the general admitted that he wanted to "regain the possession of A.

To gauge whether this was possible, Smith Lee made a clandestine visit to the old estate in the autumn or winter of He concluded that the place could be made habitable again if a wall was built to screen the graves from the mansion. But Smith Lee made the mistake of sharing his views with the cemetery superintendent, who dutifully shared them with Meigs, along with the mystery visitor's identity. While the Lees worked to reclaim Arlington, Meigs urged Edwin Stanton in early to make sure the government had sound title to the cemetery.

The land had been consecrated by the remains buried there and could not be given back to the Lees, he insisted, striking a refrain he would repeat in the years ahead. Yet the Lees clung to the hope that Arlington might be returned to the family—if not to Mrs. Lee, then to one of their sons. The former general was quietly pursuing this objective when he met with his lawyers for the last time, in July The question of Arlington's ownership was still unresolved when Lee died, at 63, in Lexington, on October 12, His widow continued to obsess over the loss of her home.

Arlington National Cemetery. An average of 25 burials are performed each day. Arlington National Cemetery covers acres of land. More than three million tourists pass through the cemetery each year. However, the Quartermaster General was not convinced that the cemetery was necessarily permanent, fearing that the end of the War might allow the Lees to resume control over Arlington and potentially remove the graves on the property. In hopes of preventing such from occurring, Meigs wanted to place graves as close to the mansion as possible.

Doing so, he felt, would make the house uninhabitable. In his original proposal to Secretary Stanton, Meigs specified:. I have visited and inspected the grounds now used as a Cemetery upon the Arlington Estate.

I recommend that interments in this ground be discontinued and that the land surrounding the Arlington Mansion, now understood to be the property of the United States, be appropriated as a National Cemetery, to be properly enclosed, laid out, and carefully preserved for that purpose, and that the bodies recently interred by removed to the National Cemetery thus to be established.

The grounds about the Mansion are admirably adapted for such a use. At first, most of the burials were made some distance from the mansion. As Meigs recorded later, many of the officers quartered in the mansion were uncomfortable with the idea of living in the middle of a graveyard, "It was my intention to have begun the interments nearer the mansion, but opposition on the part of officers stationed at Arlington, some of whom used the mansion and who did not like to have the dead buried near them, caused the interments to be begun in the northeast corner of the grounds near Arlington road.

On discovering this on a visit I gave specific instructions to make the burials near the mansion. They were then driven off by the same influence to the western portion of the grounds.

Meigs continued to push the issue and, after considerable effort, finally got his wish. In August , 26 bodies were buried along the perimeter of Mrs.

This letter, directed to Major General D. There being more than a thousand interments yet to be made, the views of the Quartermaster General can now be carried out.

Both practically and symbolically, the possibility of Robert E. Our network, websites and apps are information systems IS provided to you as a public service and managed by the United States Government. By accessing our IS including any device connected to this IS you are consenting to the terms and conditions found in our User Acceptance Policy. The information you provide us shall be used to respond and assist you with information you have requested from OAC.

Arlington Estate was established by George Washington's adopted grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, to be a living memorial to the first president. Custis's daughter, Mary, married U.

Army 1st Lieutenant Robert E. Lee in When he died, Custis left the estate to his daughter Mary Custis Lee for the duration of her life, and upon her death, her eldest son would inherit the property. Robert E. Lee served as the executor of his father-in-law's will and never owned the property. After the Lees abandoned the property at the start of the Civil War, the U.