A Grave Decision

Brigadier general Montgomery C. Meigs wanted revenge. He was angry when Robert E. Lee quit the U.S. Army to lead a Confederate force in the Civil War (1861–1865). Meigs’s anger grew deeper as time passed and thousands of Union soldiers died in battles with Lee’s army.

When he was told to find a new place to bury the dead from the latest campaign against Lee, Meigs saw his chance. He chose a plantation near Washington, D.C., called Arlington. It happened to be the Lee family’s home.

Arlington sat on a beautiful spot atop a hill in Virginia just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital. The house, with its front entrance framed by eight thick pillars, looked more like a monument than a home. In fact, it was a monument. Lee’s wife, Mary Custis, was a descendant of Martha Washington. Her family owned Arlington. It had been built by the Washingtons’ grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, as a museum honoring Martha’s husband, George. It was filled with the Washingtons’ belongings.

Shortly after Lee left to join the Confederate army, Union troops moved in, making Arlington the headquarters for the defense of Washington. Several forts were built on the property. In 1863, as the war raged on, freed slaves streamed into Washington. The government built a town at Arlington to house them. Called Freedmen’s Village, it included schools, homes, churches, a hospital, and land to farm.

The first Union soldier to be buried on the property was interred on May 13, 1864. By the end of the year, more than 7,000 soldiers had been buried near him, an average of more than 30 a day.

When the war ended in 1865, Lee wanted to contribute to peace. He did not try to reclaim Arlington. Many of the Lees’ possessions had disappeared, including much of their Washington collection. Lee had tried to prepare his wife for this, writing that, “It is better to make up our minds to a general loss. They cannot take away the remembrance of the spot, and the memories of those that to us rendered it sacred.” Still, Lee was deeply saddened by the loss of his home. He saw Arlington only two more times, from a distance while on visits to Washington.

Meigs got his revenge—Lee never lived at Arlington again. But he could not have known where his decision to create a military cemetery would lead. With time, the neat rows of simple markers became very special. The site became the nation’s greatest monument to its war dead: Arlington National Cemetery.

As the years passed, more soldiers served in more wars, and many of them were buried there. Today, the Department of the Army oversees the management of this sacred place, which now honors more than 300,000 men and women who have served the nation.