The Hidden History of Arlington Cemetery

 

Arlington House

Mary and Robert E. Lee lived in Arlington House until 1861 when Virginia seceded from the Union and Lee went south to join the Confederate army. Union troops moved into an subsequently took possession of the estate which became a national cemetery.

 Neither Robert E. Lee nor his wife ever set foot in Arlington House again. After the death of his parents, George Washington Custis Lee claimed that the house and land had been illegally confiscated and that, according to his grandfather's will, he was the legal owner.

 In December 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, returned the property to George Washington Custis Lee, stating that it had been confiscated without due process.

Would the dead have to be transferred to a new site?  General Lee's son diffused the crisis by selling the house and land to the government for its’ fair market value.

Suggested Reading:

On Hallowed Ground: TheStory of Arlington National Cemetery

A definitive, deeply researched history of Arlington National Cemetery. This book guides readers from the estate’s Civil War origins to its role as America’s most sacred military burial ground. Perfect for anyone wanting the full story behind the land, the legends, and the legacy.

Section 27 and Freedman’s Village in Arlington National Cemetery

A powerful exploration of the cemetery’s lesser‑known African American history. This book uncovers the stories of Freedman’s Village and Section 27, offering essential context for readers interested in Arlington’s hidden past and the lives of formerly enslaved people who lived there.

Arlington National Cemetery: A Guided Tour Through History A concise, visitor‑friendly guide that blends narrative history with practical touring insights. Ideal for readers planning a visit or wanting a structured overview of Arlington’s evolution from plantation to national shrine.

Arlington NationalCemetery (Images of America Series)

A rich photographic history capturing Arlington’s transformation across decades. This visual collection is perfect for readers who want to see the cemetery’s past through archival images and rare historical photographs.

Arlington NationalCemetery: The History of America’s Most Famous Military Cemetery

A broad, accessible overview of Arlington’s founding, Civil War roots, and national significance. Excellent for general readers seeking a clear, engaging introduction to the cemetery’s place in American memory.

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

Virginia Legends and Lore

The Custer Legend and Arlington National Cemetery

William Belknap

The legend of George Armstrong Custer began at the First Battle of Manassas.  Custer would enjoy a spectacularly successful military career until massacred by Sioux Indians in 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.  Custer is buried at West Point but some of those involved in his legend are buried at Arlington.

William W. Belknap was a Civil War Union Brigadier General, and later served as Secretary of War during the Grant Administration.  By 1875 allegations of bribery surrounded Belknap because of his appointment of post traders who sold merchandise on military installations.  George Armstrong Custer was called to testify before Congress in the matter.

Custer accused President Grant's brother and Secretary of War Belknap of corruption. Belknap was impeached and sent to the Senate for trial.  President Grant stripped Custer of overall command of the column chosen to subdue the Sioux and placed him under the command of Brigadier General Alfred Terry.  Custer lost his life trying to regain his career.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Views of Custer have changed over succeeding generations. Custer has been portrayed as a callous egotist, a bungling egomaniac, a genocidal war criminal, and the puppet of faceless forces. For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values. Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history. This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

Gifts for Dogs and Dog Lovers

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 1921

On March 4, 1921, Congress approved the burial of an unidentified American serviceman from World War I at Arlington National Cemetery. A highly decorated soldier, Sgt. Edward F. Younger, selected from four identical caskets. The World War I Unknown lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda prior to burial at Arlington National Cemetery.  On Armistice Day, November 11, 1921, President Warren G. Harding presided over the interment ceremonies. 

Even in 1921 the intention had been to place a superstructure atop the Tomb, but it was not until 1926 that Congress authorized the necessary funds for completion of the Tomb.  Architect Lorimer Rich and sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones won a design competition for a tomb that would consist of seven pieces of marble in four levels (cap, die, base and sub-base.)  The “die” is the large central block with sculpting on all four sides. By September, 1931 all seven blocks of marble were at the Tomb site. By the end of December 1931, the assembly was completed.  Carvings on the central block under the direction of the sculptor Thomas Jones started thereafter. The Tomb was completed in April, 1932.

Installation of the sarcophagus for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Tomb sarcophagus was dedicated on April 9, 1932.  The marble sarcophagus weighs seventy nine tons and is inscribed, “Here Lies in Honored Glory – An American Soldier – Known But to God”.

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

The Civil War Unknowns Monument at Arlington National Cemetery

The first memorial constructed at Arlington national Cemetery was the Civil War Unknowns Monument which was meant as a tribute to Union soldiers.  Bodies of 2,111 dead soldiers were collected within a thirty five mile radius.  Most were full or partial remains discovered unburied and unidentifiable. An inscription on the west face of the memorial describes the number of dead in the vault below, “Beneath this stone repose the bones of two thousand one hundred and eleven unknown soldiers gathered after the war from the fields of Bull Run, and the route to the Rappahannock.  Their remains could not be identified, but their names and deaths are recorded in the archives of their country; and its grateful citizens honor them as of their noble army of martyrs. May they rest in peace! September. A. D. 1866.” This site was once a grove of trees near one of the estate’s flower gardens.

Originally, a Rodman gun was placed at each corner, and a pyramid of shot adorned the center of the lid.  By 1893, the memorial had been redesigned.  The plain walls had been embellished, and although the inscription had been retained, the lid was replaced by one modeled after the Ark of the Covenant.

Several hundred Confederate dead were buried at Arlington by the end of the war in April 1865. Some were prisoners of war who died in custody.  Some were executed spies.  Some, because of the inability to identify remains, were probably buried in the monument to the Union dead. 

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

Wars and Invasions (Four alternative history stories)

General George S. Patton once said, “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” Here are four stories about the history of the world IF wars we know about happened differently or IF wars that never happened actually took place.

The Strange Case of Montgomery Meigs and Robert E. Lee

Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs (above), commander of the garrison at Arlington House and Quartermaster General of the Union Army, who may have had a grudge against Robert E. Lee, was tasked with finding additional burial grounds for battle casualties.  Meigs and Lee had served together many years earlier as military engineers on the Mississippi River.  Lee was a 1^st Lieutenant and Meigs his subordinate, a 2^nd Lieutenant.  Did Meigs bear Lee a personal grudge?  Some historians think so, or perhaps he was just embittered by the war itself, or by Lee’s defection from the Union army.  Meigs wrote to the Secretary of War stating that “the grounds about the mansion are admirably suited to such a use.” Meigs reported his “grim satisfaction” of ordering twenty six Union dead to be buried near Mrs. Lee’s rose garden in June, 1864. 

Meigs had graves dug right up to the entrance to the house.  This was malicious.  Meigs intended to prevent the Lee family from ever again inhabiting the house.  More than 16,000 Union soldiers were buried on the estate’s grounds. Ironically, Meigs’ own son was sent to Arlington Cemetery for burial.                                                                             

Neither Robert E. Lee nor his wife ever set foot in Arlington House again. In 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court returned the property to the Lee family, stating that it had been confiscated without due process. General Lee's son sold the house and land to the government for its’ fair market value. 

Read more: Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

Women Doctors in the Civil War

A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by their male colleagues at every turn.

Gifts for Dog Lovers

The Tomb of the Unknowns

Installation of the Sarcophagus for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (from World War I) is seen here.  The Tomb sarcophagus was dedicated on April 9, 1932.  The marble sarcophagus weighs seventy nine tons and is inscribed, “Here Lies in Honored Glory – An American Soldier – Known But to God”. In 1958, Unknown American soldiers from World War II and the Korean War were interred with the Unknown Soldier of World War I.  On August 3, 1956, President Eisenhower signed a bill to select and pay tribute to the Unknowns of World War II and the Korean War. The selection ceremonies took place in 1958. The World War II Unknown was selected from remains exhumed from cemeteries in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific.  The caskets of the World War II and Korean War Unknowns were interred beside their World War I comrade on May 30, 1958. The designation of the Vietnam Unknown has proven to be difficult. With improvements in DNA testing it is possible that the remains of every soldier killed in the Vietnam War and later conflicts will be identified.

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

ARifleman in Normandy

A first person account of the Normandy campaign from D-Day + 1 to the liberation of Paris. 

War from the perspective of the average citizen soldier.

Major Archibald Butt and the Sinking of the Titanic

Archibald Butt was the military aide to both Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.  Butt and his housemate (some say lover), the painter Francis Davis Millet, died during the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912.  Butt was universally recognized for his heroic conduct during the tragedy. His body was never recovered.  President Taft who had come to regard Major Butt, “as a son or a brother”, praised him as a Christian gentleman and the perfect soldier.  Taft wrote, “I knew that he would certainly remain on the ship's deck until every duty had been performed and every sacrifice made that properly fell on one charged, as he would feel himself charged, with responsibility for the rescue of others.”  At a May 5 ceremony, Taft broke down weeping, bringing his eulogy to an abrupt end.

As the Titanic sank, the crew prepared the lifeboats and Major Butt helped in the rescue efforts.  One survivor described him as calm and collected, “Major Butt helped…frightened people so wonderfully, tenderly, and yet with such cool and manly firmness.  He was a soldier to the last.”  A cenotaph was erected in the summer of 1913 by his brothers in Section 3 of Arlington National Cemetery at a point that Major Butt had previously selected as his gravesite.  The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain, a private memorial fountain, located in the President’s Park, adjacent to the White House, was dedicated in October 1913.  Powerful friends argued that Butt (who was an aide to the president) and Millet (who was vice chair of the United States Commission of Fine Arts at the time of his death) were both public servants who deserved to be memorialized separately from private citizens who died in the Titanic disaster. 

Major Archibald Butt

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery

     Several hundred Confederate dead were buried at the new national cemetery at Arlington by the end of the war in April 1865. Some were prisoners of war who died in custody, some were executed spies, and some were battlefield dead. The federal government did not permit the decoration of Confederate graves. Families of Confederates buried at Arlington were refused permission to lay flowers on their loved ones' graves.

     In 1868, families of dead Confederates were barred from the cemetery on Decoration Day (now Memorial Day). Union veterans prowled the cemetery ensuring that Confederate graves were not honored in any way.  Cemetery authorities refused to allow monuments to the Confederate dead or allow Confederate veterans to be buried at Arlington.

     Because of the Spanish-American War and the need to end still simmering sectional differences, the federal government's policy toward Confederate graves at Arlington National Cemetery changed. On December 14, 1898, President McKinley announced that the federal government would begin tending Confederate graves since these dead represented “a tribute to American valor”.  Several hundred Confederate soldiers buried throughout Arlington National Cemetery were disinterred and reburied in a “Confederate section” around the spot designated for the Confederate Memorial.  

    On June 4, 1914 President Woodrow Wilson dedicated the Confederate Memorial at Arlington. The Confederate Memorial was dedicated to peace and reconciliation and to the hope of a united future.  U.S. Presidents have traditionally sent a wreath to be placed at the Confederate Memorial on Memorial Day.

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia