The final resting place of presidents, bandleaders,
war heroes, astronauts, inventors, civil rights leaders, Pulitzer Prize winners, boxers, Supreme
Court justices and sports stars, Arlington National Cemetery stands as a memorial to
the melting pot of the United States. With connections to some of our nation's most influential
people and pivotal events, its history is as interesting as its denizens.
Arlington is situated on 624 acres overlooking the Potomac River directly across from Washington,
D. C. Although today it is surrounded by the nation's capital, at one time, Arlington was
a bucolic estate with a neoclassical mansion, Arlington House. Still presiding over the
grounds today, the mansion was built by George Washington's (yes, that Washington) grandson
and marks the beginning of the cemetery's history.
Before she married George, Martha was married to Daniel Parke Custis. After he died and
she wed the "Father" of the Country, George adopted her two surviving children. The oldest,
John Parke Custis, died in 1781 while serving with the Revolutionary Army. He left behind
four children, the youngest of which, George Washington Parke Custis, was born only shortly
before his father's death. GW Parke Custis and one sister went to live
with the Washington's. When he became of age in 1802, he inherited wealth and property
from his deceased father John, including the Arlington land. Hoping to build a home that
could also serve as a memorial to his grandfather, George Washington, Parke Custis hired an architect
and built a Greek revival mansion believed by some to be modeled after the Athenian Temple
of Hephaestus. The home was built in pieces, with the north
wing being completed in 1802, and the south in 1804. These two stood as separate buildings
until the central section connected them in 1818. During Parke Custis's life, a portion
of the mansion was reserved to store George Washington memorabilia, which included portraits,
papers and even the tent Washington used while in command at Yorktown.
Parke Custis’ and his family lived and died on the property, where many of them were buried.
In 1831, his only surviving child, Mary, married Robert E. Lee (yes, that Lee). The Lee's lived
on the property with the Custis's where they raised their seven children. At her father's
death, Mary inherited Arlington. Robert E. Lee loved the property and once described
it as the place "where my attachments are more strongly placed than at any other place
in the world." Prior to the Civil War, Lee had attended West
Point (graduating second in his class) and saw service for the U.S. in the Mexican War
(1846-1848). A respected and well-liked officer, Lee struggled with his decision to resign
his commission of 36 years and side with the Confederacy. Before he did, he was offered
the position of the head of the Union army by Abraham Lincoln.
Noteworthy here is that Lee was staunchly against secession in the first place, stating
in a letter to GW Parke Custis, “As an American citizen, I take great pride
in my country, her prosperity and institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were
invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the
Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing
to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation.”
As for his own views on slavery, he was conflicted. For example, in 1856 he wrote,
“There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery
as an institution is a moral and political evil… I think it is a greater evil to the
white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter,
my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former...”
Further, unlike many other slave owners, he also advocated for educating slaves.
Of course, on the flip side, he was a slave owner, denounced the immediately abolition
of slavery, and was against giving even free black people the right to vote. He also felt
that if all the slaves were freed, it would be better for his native state if the freed
individuals were removed from the region. In the end, Lee couldn’t initially decide
who to side with in the conflict, and thus, he seemed poised to choose to sit the war
out completely. But upon seeking the advice of famed military commander Winfield Scott,
Scott had one message for him- “You cannot sit out the war.”
Not long after, he finally made his decision, not so much to advocate for either side specifically,
but rather, for Virginia. Stating, “I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it
may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia,
in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty.”
Thus, he turned down Lincoln’s offer, and shortly thereafter accepted, not the command
of the Confederate army, but rather, initially simply the command of the Virginian army.
This decision led his aforementioned mentor Winfield Scott to write to Lee, “You have
made the greatest mistake of your life...” Going back to the family’s lands in Arlington,
its position on high ground overlooking the capital was critical to either the defense
or defeat of D.C., Union leaders, thus, were eager to control it. After Virginia seceded
in May 1861, Union troops crossed en masse into Virginia and soon took command of the
estate. The grounds were quickly converted into a Union camp.
By 1862, Congress had passed a law that imposed a tax on the real property of "insurrectionists."
Mary was unable to pay the tax bill in person, and her proxy's attempt to satisfy the debt
was rebuffed. As a result, tax not paid, Uncle Sam seized Arlington, and at its auction,
the federal government purchased the estate for $26,800 (about $607,000 today- far below
market value). Not only a good bargain, Union leaders felt
that by seizing the estates of prominent Rebels, they would, in the words of Gen. William T.
Sherman: "Make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal
to it." In 1863, after thousands of former slaves,
freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, converged on D.C., a Freedman's Village was established
on the estate "complete with new frame houses, schools, churches and farmlands on which former
slaves grew food for the Union war effort." As one contemporary journalist for the Washington
Independent described it: “One sees more than poetic justice in the
fact that its rich lands, so long the domain of the great general of the rebellion, now
afford labor and support to hundreds of enfranchised slaves.”
As Union casualties began to mount in the spring of 1864, Gen. Meigs suggested burying
some of the dead at Arlington. The first, on May 13, 1864, was Pvt. William Christman,
a poor soldier whose family could not afford the cost of a burial. Soon, many other indigent
soldiers were laid to rest on Arlington's grounds, near the slave and freedman cemetery
that had already been established. Realizing the efficacy of this system, Gen. Meigs urged
Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton: “I recommend that . . . the land surrounding
Arlington Mansion . . . be appropriated as a National Military Cemetery, to be properly
enclosed, laid out and carefully preserved for that purpose.”
Serving the dual goals of paying homage to the dead and as a further jab at the Lees,
Meigs had prominent Union officers buried near Mrs. Lee's garden. He also placed a mass
grave of over 2000 unknown soldiers, topped with a raised sarcophagus, close to the house.
After the war, the Lee’s tried in vain to regain Arlington. Mary wrote to a friend that
the graves: "are planted up to the very door without any regard to common decency." After
Robert E. Lee's death in 1870, Mary petitioned Congress for the return of her family home,
but this proposal was soundly defeated. Shortly after, other monuments and structures
honoring the dead were erected including numerous elaborate Gilded Age tombstones and the large,
red McClellan Gate at the entrance to the grounds.
The family was not done, however, and in January 1879, following six days of trial a jury determined
that the requirement that Mary Lee had to pay the 1862 tax in person was unconstitutional.
On appeal, the Supreme Court concurred, so the property was once again in the hands of
the Lee family. Rather than disinter graves and move monuments,
however, the federal government and Mary Lee's son, George Washington Custis Lee, agreed
on a sale. On March 31, 1883, Uncle Sam purchased Arlington from the Lee family for $150,000
(about $3,638,000 today). And the rest, as
they say, is history.
Bonus Fact: Speaking of the American Civil War- ever wonder
what happened to Confederate President Jefferson Davis after the war? Well, wonder no more.
Even with a surrender signed and the Civil War effectively over, Davis didn’t want
to admit defeat. He set-up a temporary government in Danville with his trusted advisors (John
H. Reagan, Judah P. Benjamin, John Breckinridge, and Burton Harrison among them) to try to
figure out a way to reinforce their troops and push the fighting further west. Privately,
he began to make plans to flee abroad to a sympathetic Britain or France, thinking that
he could form a government in exile. It was not to be.
On April 15th, President Lincoln was assassinated. Now-President Andrew Johnson was under the
(false) assumption that Davis and his cohorts had been directly involved in the murder of
the President. Union troops, with the US War Department’s $100,000 bounty (about $1.6
million today) on Davis motivating them, moved towards Danville.
Davis and company retreated even further South. They ended up in the town of Washington in
Wilkes County, Georgia. On May 4th, Davis held what would be the Confederacy's final
cabinet meeting in Washington's State of Georgia Bank building. Davis authorized payments from
the treasury to his officials and left the rest in care of Captain Micajah Clark in Washington,
where the money promptly disappeared… Davis, with his family, had been traveling
throughout Georgia when they finally made camp in Irwinville in central Georgia on May
9th. The next morning, they were awakened by gunshots. The First Wisconsin and Fourth
Michigan cavalries had caught up to them. There are several different interpretations
of what happened in those final moments of freedom for Jefferson Davis. While attempting
to flee, the Northern press wrote that he was wearing his wife’s shawl and/or petticoat
in an attempt to trick his captors. He was called a coward and, later, a popular song
of the era was entitled “Jeff in Petticoats.” Davis’s wife insisted, backed up by other
historical accounts, that he was simply wearing a shawl because he had become quite ill over
the last few days and she had given it to him to keep him warm. Either way, there was
no escape. Jefferson Davis officially became a prisoner of the United States government.
He was transported to Fort Monroe in Virginia where he was held for two years as a military
prisoner. Soldiers watched him 24/7 to ensure he didn’t try to escape, that he ate, and
didn’t try to commit suicide. The country debated how to handle the most famous war
criminal from the Civil War. At first, President Johnson wanted to prosecute Davis as a co-conspirator
in the assassination of President Lincoln. However, as the trial for the true assassination
conspirators wound down in late June 1865, it became clear that Jefferson Davis had no
direct connection to the parties. Within a year, Davis was transported to much
better quarters and his wife was even allowed to move to Fort Monroe to be near him. According
to the Virginia Foundation of Humanities, Davis respected the way he was being treated
by the government. He was afforded certain privileges, like visitors, exercise, and time
with his wife, that they didn’t necessarily have to give him.
On May 13, 1867, he was released into civilian custody on $100,000 bail. The editor of the
New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, abolitionist Gerrit Smith, and several other prominent
Northerners paid that bail. Said Smith on his reasoning for doing this,
“My first reason for signing the Bond was that Mr. Davis was entitled either to his
trial or to his liberty. That the prisoner should have a speedy trial is a general proposition,
which no one combats. There may have been sufficient reasons for unusual delay in trying
Mr. Davis: - hardly, however, for a delay of two years.”
President Andrew Johnson’s own impeachment trial delayed any motions even further. Additionally,
there were several issues that the prosecution (the US government) ran into charging Davis
with treason. For one, the defendant (Davis) demanded a trial which forced the government
to figure out the correct way to prove the unconstitutionality of secession. Needless
to say, this was a tough task and the government asked for more time to gather their argument.
Finally in December 1868, a year and half after he was released on bail, preliminary
motions were held for Davis on the charges of treason against the United States for organizing
and arming the 1864 military invasions of Maryland and the District of Columbia.
The defense immediately called for a dismissal of the charges. They said that since Davis
would already be punished by the Fourteenth Amendment, he could not be further prosecuted
under the double jeopardy provision. The Fourteenth Amendment had only been passed in July of
that year and dealt with a lot of issues in regards to Reconstruction, but in section
three it read, “No person shall be a Senator or Representative
in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military,
under the United States... shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,
or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The case went to the Supreme Court, but it
was never tried. For fear that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of the defense and
make the US government look incompetent, President Johnson issued a pardon on Christmas Day,
1868 to all persons who participated in the “rebellion.” Jefferson Davis was no longer
a wanted man. Davis and his family traveled to Europe for
a time after his release. Upon returning, he took up residence in Tennessee. He kept
to himself and didn’t comment publicly about Reconstruction. Privately, according William
Cooper’s biography on Davis, he thought of African-Americans as inferior to white
men and resented that the South was ruled by, to quote, “Yankees and Negroe.”
He moved to an estate called Beauvoir near Biloxi, Mississippi. In fact, the state of
Mississippi tried to make him a US Senator, only for him to be denied due the previously
discussed Fourteenth Amendment. As his quiet retirement continued, he completed a two-volume
book in 1881 about his wartime experiences called The Rise and Fall of the Confederate
Government. In 1888, his reputation as a Confederate hero restored, he said this to an audience
of supporters in Mississippi, “... lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional
feeling, and make your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation
devoutly to be wished—a reunited country.” On December 6, 1889, Jefferson Davis passed
away in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was buried there for four years until 1893, when he was
relocated to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. His remains are still there, in
the same city where his fall began.