I have visited and inspected the grounds now used as a Cemetery upon the Arlington Estate. In his original proposal to Secretary Stanton, Meigs specified: Doing so, he felt, would make the house uninhabitable. In hopes of preventing such from occurring, Meigs wanted to place graves as close to the mansion as possible. However, the Quartermaster General was not convinced that the cemetery was necessarily permanent, fearing that the end of the War might allow the Lees to resume control over Arlington and potentially remove the graves on the property. ![]() Meigs likely appreciated the prediction that Americans would one day “heartily thank the initiators of this movement.” He viewed the creation of the cemetery as a means for restoring honor to the property, which he felt Lee had dishonored by resigning from the U.S. This and the contraband establishment there are righteous uses of the estate of the rebel General Lee, and will never dishonor the spot made venerable by the occupation of Washington. The people of the entire nation will one day, not very far distant, heartily thank the initiators of this movement…. The grounds are undulating, handsomely adorned, and in very respect admirably fitted for the sacred purpose to which they have been dedicated. The ‘powers that be’ have been induced to appropriate two hundred acres, immediately around the house of General Lee, on Arlington Heights, for the burial of soldiers dying in the army hospitals of this city. On June 17, the National Republican reported: ![]() The Republican press hailed the choice of Arlington. The same day, Stanton approved Meigs’ recommendation and instructed that part of the Arlington Estate, “not exceeding two hundred acres” be surveyed and laid out for the national cemetery. Lee probably made it even more attractive to Meigs, who formally proposed Arlington as the site of the new cemetery in a letter to Secretary of War Stanton on June 15, 1864. The fact that the land had also been the plantation home of Robert E. Government had legally purchased the property at public auction in January 1864, it emerged as a logical choice. Meigs did not have to look very far.Īs the Army had occupied Arlington since 1861 and the U.S. Meanwhile, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs set about the task of identifying an appropriate place for a new, official cemetery. To relieve the desperate situation, the Army started burying soldiers along the northern border of the Arlington estate, approximately one half mile from the mansion-headquarters, in May of 1864. ![]() They came groping, hobbling, and faltering, so faint and so longing for rest that one’s heart bled at the piteous sight.” As many of these men died, cemeteries in the city and surrounding areas filled to capacity. arrived by hundreds as long as the waves of sorrow came streaming back from the fields of slaughter…. ĭescribing the hospitals, Washington journalist Noah Brooks wrote: “Maimed and wounded…. ![]() As fighting intensified, Washington hospitals-in many cases, converted churches, public halls, or governmental buildings-were flooded with wounded soldiers, brought up the Potomac from battlefields in Virginia and elsewhere. In the spring of 1864, as the Civil War entered its third year, the Union Army began an offensive designed to finally crush the Confederate Army.
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