Arlington: Plantation to National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the most well-known graveyards in United States history, being the final resting place of many military veterans who paid the ultimate price for their country. Yet few know the price that the US Government had to pay to acquire Arlington. The price of the cemetery itself could be interpreted as just as symbolic of the Reconstruction and healing phase of the Civil War as the soldiers in the yard are symbols of the war and deconstruction of the nation itself.

The first owner of Arlington was George Washington Parke Custis, adopted grandson of the nation's first president. On the eve of the Civil War, the estate's inhabitants included Custis' descendant, Mary Anne C. Lee and her husband, General Robert E. Lee. However, when the war broke out and Lee sided with the South, the couple was forced to flee the estate they loved. Though this disturbed General Lee, it seems that he comforted his wife (and therefore probably himself) by stating that nothing the US Government could do would ruin their memories of Arlington.

Lee, however, had not counted on the resourcefulness and spite of Union General Montgomery C. Meigs, head of the Union Quartermaster Corps. One can only imagine how frustrating it would have been for Meigs to watch legions of fallen Union soldiers pass through Washington on their way from their final stands to their final rests, all in the shadow of the empty home of the man who had done this to them. In an act of revenge nothing short of ingenious, Meigs combined his two problems to form one solution. He seized Lee's home and encircled it with Union dead, in the hope that Lee would never be able to return, even taking special care to bury 1800 casualties in Mary Lee's cherished rose garden. As a final insult to Lee, Meigs reserved a burial plot less than 100 yards from the manor house proper for himself and the Meigs family. His plan worked, as neither Lee nor his wife ever laid eyes on their home again, even after the War.

Even after the War, many in the North still harbored ill-will towards the South and its heroes. Despite this, Abraham Lincoln had intended Reconstruction to be about healing and forgiveness, a goal that in some ways lived on even after his assassination, and in a way Arlington itself can be considered a symbol of this. Specifically, years after the War, General Lee's son, George W.C. Lee, sued the Government to regain ownership of his family's estate. Given that the place was a national cemetery by this point, it is especially surprising that in December 1885 the Supreme Court ordered the land returned to Lee on the grounds that it had not been taken with due process. As such, the notion of forgiveness can be seen in the fact that it would have been much easier for the Court to rule the other way based solely on the plaintiff's parentage, especially when one considers that four months later the Government ended up purchasing Arlington for 150,000. Given that this is a small fortune even today, it becomes especially surprising that the Government was willing to extend so much courtesy to Lee's son.