By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
ARLINGTON, Va., May 13, 2014 – Today, as Arlington National
Cemetery marks the 150th anniversary of its first burial, it is a scene of
harmony and reconciliation.
It didn’t start that way.
Before the Civil War, the property overlooking the Potomac
River -- called the Custis-Lee Mansion or Arlington House -- was the home of
Robert E. Lee. The house and grounds belonged to Lee’s wife, Mary, and in 1861
the Lee family had called Arlington home for 30 years.
Lee was at Arlington House when he received word that
Virginia had seceded from the Union in April 1861. This caused a crisis for
Lee, who was a U.S. Army colonel at the time. He had been offered command of
the Union Army, and he agonized over the decision on whether to stay with the Union
or go with his state.
On April 20, Lee submitted his resignation from the Army. He
left Arlington House two days later. He ultimately rose to command the
Confederate army.
Across the river in Washington, another Southern officer
came to a different decision. Montgomery C. Meigs was a Georgian who graduated
from West Point and as a Corps of Engineers officer and had built many of the
major projects of the day. Meigs considered his oath to “support and defend the
Constitution” as paramount, and when his home state of Georgia seceded, he
stayed with the Union.
Meigs rose to be quartermaster general of Union forces. He
was one of the first officers anywhere to understand the importance of
logistics in military operations, and he welded together a system that
capitalized on the Union’s manufacturing and transportation expertise.
For Arlington House, whether Lee stayed with the Union or
went with Virginia didn’t really matter in 1861, because the property was so
strategically important, Arlington National Cemetery historian Stephen Carney
said. The property included high ground and dominated two bridges into the
district. If Confederate forces placed artillery units on the heights, they
would have had everything from the White House to the Capitol and more in
range.
In one of the first movements of the Civil War, Union forces
occupied Arlington and built two forts on the heights as part of the defenses
for Washington.
Lee’s family lost the land for failure to pay tax on the
land. Mary Lee had attempted to pay the tax -- a total of $92.07. She did not
appear in person, but asked an agent -- possibly her cousin, to do so,
according to Carney. But the federal government refused to accept the tax
payment from that person.
The government acquired the house and land for $26,800 in
1864 and built a Freedman’s Village on the property to house the freed slaves
who gravitated to Washington.
On April 30, 1864, the Army of the Potomac began the
Overland Campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia. Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses
S. Grant moved across the Rappahannock River and immediately ran into Lee’s
forces at the Battle of the Wilderness.
But instead of a one-day battle, as was the case before, the
warfare ground on with battles in Spotsylvania, Yellow Tavern, North Anna, Cold
Harbor and so on. It was a blood-letting the likes of which the world hadn’t
seen. Estimates vary, but Civil War historians put the number of casualties in
the range of 55,000 for the Union and 34,000 for the Confederates.
Washington was the closest city and served as the base of
operations. It was a hub where rivers, roads and rail came together. It was
both a supply center and a hospice, Carney said.
And in charge of it all was Union Brig. Gen. Montgomery Meigs,
the quartermaster general. Meigs detested the Confederacy and the officers who
had betrayed their oaths to the United States of America. He was responsible
for supplying the needs of the Union Army, and he also was responsible for
burying them.
In May 1864, the graveyards of Washington and neighboring
Alexandria were overwhelmed by the demand. Meigs ordered a review, Carney said.
Engineers came back saying that Arlington was the most
suitable site. “It was high above the river and the center of many roads,”
Carney said. That it was the home of Robert E. Lee -- the author of much of the
destruction -- was not lost on Meigs, Carney said.
Meigs had served under Lee in the pre-war Army as the two
worked to improve navigation on the Mississippi River. They knew each other
well. When Lee followed his state, Meigs felt betrayed. Establishing a cemetery
on the property would ensure the Lee family could not re-occupy the land or
house, Carney said.
The first military burial at Arlington was Pvt. William
Henry Christman on May 13, 1864. The 67th Pennsylvania Infantry soldier was
buried a good distance north of Arlington House. Meigs saw this and ordered the
next burials to be in what was Mary Lee’s rose garden, feet from the door to
Arlington House, Carney said.
Meigs formally declared the cemetery open in June 1864, and
thousands of burials followed. At the end of the war, Meigs gathered the bones
of thousands of Union soldiers that had been hastily buried at Virginia
battlefields, and placed them in a burial vault in the rose garden.
The Lee family ultimately received payment from the federal
government for Arlington House, but no one ever lived in the house again,
Carney said.
The cemetery became a focal point during Decoration Day.
Thousands of Americans journeyed to Arlington to place tributes on the graves
of those buried at Arlington. The cemetery also became a visible sign of
reconciliation -- it features a Confederate Monument with the graves of
Confederate veterans around it.
The construction of the Memorial Bridge in 1932 symbolically
linked the Lincoln Memorial in Washington with Arlington House in the midst of
the cemetery.
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