#1: The Need for a National Cemetery

This week we talk a little about what Arlington National Cemetery looks like today, what the property started out as, and why a national cemetery was needed next to Washington, DC in the first place.

This Week's Ghosts of Arlington are:

1. George Washington Parke Custis  (Section 13, Grave 6513)
2. Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis (Section 13, Grave 6512)

For more information, including links to stream the show, visit the GoA website: https://www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com 

Transcript

Episode 1: The need for a National Cemetery

Welcome and thank you for joining me at The Ghosts of Arlington Podcast; Episode 1: The Need for a National Cemetery. <PLAY THEME>  I am very excited to begin sharing the stories of the ghosts of Arlington – individuals buried at the most famous cemetery in the United States. Before we start today, I have just a few admin notes. First, I just want to pledge everyone that I will do my best to pull stories from accurate, reputable sources and will post a bibliography on my humble DIY website which can be found at www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com; second, I am not the biggest fan of social media but I would like to interact with anyone so inclined; to that end, I have posted links on the website of where I can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit; third, this is just a reminder that while this production has next to no budget, it is not short on passion; and finally, I plan to spend the first few episodes talking about the establishment of Arlington as a national cemetery and after that, focus on the lives of one or more interred individuals per episode… but I reserve the right deviate from this plan as I see fit. Now without further ado, on with the show. 

There are currently 147 national cemeteries in the United States. Though not exclusively, these are generally military cemeteries serving as the final resting place for US service members, veterans, and their spouses. The National Cemetery Administration maintains 131 of these cemeteries; the Department of the Army maintains two; and the National Parks Service maintains the remaining 14, which are associated with historic sites and battlefields. Additionally, 24 American military cemeteries and other memorials are located outside the United States and maintained by The American Battle Monuments Commission.

These cemeteries are hallowed grounds that serve as the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of war dead who laid down their lives for their country. Many of these service members voluntarily accepted the risks inherent with the profession of arms, while others were conscripted into the military and served when they would have rather not. Regardless of one’s feelings towards war, it is difficult to not be moved by the rows upon rows of white marble headstones, many that represent young men and women who left their homes and never returned. 

By far the most famous of these cemeteries is Arlington National Cemetery, located in Arlington, Virginia on the west side of the Potomac River, directly across from Washington, DC. This sprawling site stretches out for nearly 700 acres and contains the remains of more than 400,000 Americans, as well as those from 11 other countries, including three prisoners of war from World War II. Funerals are held daily - Monday through Friday - and flags at the cemetery are flown at half-staff 30 minutes prior to the first funeral of the day until 30 minutes following the last funeral of the day. Arlington averages 30 burials each day with approximately 6,900 interments annually.

With that said, let’s travel back to 1802 when George Washington Parke Custis – a grandson of Martha Washington – turned 21 years old and inherited a large fortune from his late father, which included a plantation in northern Virginia. High on a hill overlooking the Potomac River and Washington, DC, Custis built a large Greek revival mansion that he named Arlington House in homage to the village in England where the Custis family was originally from. The house itself was built as a living memorial to Custis’s step-grandfather and guardian, George Washington… yes, that George Washington. In the house, Custis displayed relics from his youth spent living at Mount Vernon with his grandparents. 

Custis died in 1857 and was buried at Arlington Plantation alongside his wife, Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, who had passed away four years earlier. The plantation and its contents, including the George Washington artifacts and memorabilia, were bequeathed to Custis’s only surviving child, Mary Anna Randolph Custis and her husband, a US Army lieutenant colonel named Robert E. Lee… yes, that Robert E. Lee. Mary and Robert were to control and care for the Plantation until Mary’s death, at which time Custis’s will stipulated that the property was to pass to Mary and Robert’s eldest son George Washington Park Lee.

Six years later, when Virginia seceded from the Union at the start of the Civil War, Lieutenant Colonel Lee was summoned to Washington, and offered overall command of the United States Army. Looking upon succession as anarchy but not wanting to draw his sword against his native Virginia, Lee resigned his commission.3 After two days as an unemployed civilian, Lee took a train south to Richmond; the following day, April 23, 1861, he “accepted command of Virginia’s military and naval forces, with the rank of major general.” 

Due to its strategic heights, Arlington Plantation was crucial to the defense of the District of Columbia. Cannons placed on the hills surrounding the mansion could easily shell key positions in Washington, including bridges leading into and out of the city, the Capitol building, and the White House. Within a month of Lee leaving for Richmond, Federal troops streamed across the Potomac, occupied the port at Alexandria, and took the heights around Arlington without resistance. The officer who led the first column into the city happened to be Colonel Daniel Butterfield, riding at the head of his 12th New York Infantry Regiment. Though he is buried at the historic West Point Cemetery and not at Arlington, Butterfield’s legacy is a prominent part of nearly every burial that has, or ever will, occur at the cemetery. We will talk about why in the next episode – so remember his name. The troops that took Arlington were under orders from Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the US Army and the man who had tried to get General Lee to remain with the Union, to leave the remainder of the Lee family alone if they were still in their home. They were not, but they had left behind many family slaves. Over the next few weeks, the plantation was transformed into a well-fortified position, complete with a new network of roads carved into the hill sides, breastworks burrowed into the heights, and many large oak trees felled to created clear fields of fire for the newly installed artillery.         

General Lee deeply regretted the loss of his home and consoled his wife and daughter Mildred that even if the house were not destroyed, they should all expect it to be desecrated beyond of point of ever being able to move back. To Mrs. Lee, he specifically wrote: “… it is vain to think of its being in a habitable condition. I fear… books, furniture, & the relics of Mount Vernon will be gone. It is better to make up our minds to a general loss. They cannot take away the remembrances of the spot, & the memories of those that to us rendered it sacred. They will remain to us as long as life will last, & that we can preserve.”  

Virtually everyone on both sides of the forthcoming civil war were confident that the conflict would come to a swift conclusion. Many Federals believed they would be able to crush the rebel army with little effort and many Confederates believed the Northerners would not have the stomach for a long struggle and quickly sue for peace. Neither side was prepared for the staggering number of dead and wounded the war would produce. As the War entered its second year, casualty numbers began to add up. By the end of 1862, after nearly two years of warfare, well over 100,000 soldiers had died.

Most of the battles early in the war were fought close to Washington, and the Union dead and wounded flowed back to the nation’s capital in shocking numbers. The poet Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse in Washington, described the unloading of a casualty ship on a soggy night: “The pale, helpless soldiers have been debark’d and lay around the wharf. The rain was probably grateful to them; at any rate they were exposed to it… All around – on the wharf, on the ground, out on the side places – the men are lying on blankets, old quilts, &c., with bloody rags bound round heads, arms, and legs… quite often they arrive at a rate of 1000 a day… The wounded are getting to be common and people grow callous.”

The city’s improvised hospitals were quickly overwhelmed by the massive influx of dead and dying soldiers. Desperate for more room, cots were brought into the Capitol building, quickly filling the House and Senate chambers, as well as the rotunda. Beds were stacked in the Patent Office, local hotels were impressed as infirmaries, and so were Georgetown College, the Smithsonian Castle, a local asylum, synagogues, and no less than thirteen Christian churches whose bells were silenced in deference to those recuperating under their roofs. Additionally, new hospital tents and hastily constructed pavilions were erected in Judiciary Square, the National Mall, and the heights of Meridian Hill. The Peninsula Campaign alone – fought from March to July 1862, resulted in 22 new hospitals springing up in Washington – in many cases literally overnight. With none of the modern sanitary practices we have today, more than 55% of Civil War deaths occurred through infection and disease as opposed to battlefield action. 

The federal government proved to be as unprepared for burying the dead as it was for caring for the wounded. Early in the war, many of those who died in Washington were afforded none of the honors associated with a military funeral today. This was due in part to due to a lack of funds and personnel, and in part to Washington’s hot, humid climate which necessitated quick burials. “The quartermaster’s office, which took charge of burials around Washington, made contracts with undertakers to dispose of the dead. These contractors collected bodies, hauled them away, provided a shroud, crammed them into cheap coffins, buried them, and erected a wooden headboard – all for $4.49 per soldier.” Right around $100 in today’s money. While many of the undertakers did all they could to fulfill their part of the contact, they were often overwhelmed with the sheer number of dead. There were also those who looked for ways to cut corners and maximize their profits: some undertakers would dig shallow graves, slap coffins together with gaps between the wooden planks, and sometimes wrapped service members in a blanket, foregoing a casket all together. The mistreatment of some of the remains grew so intolerable that even in a community grown callous to the sights the war expressed their outrage: “When residents living near the Judiciary Square hospital woke to find a neighborhood lot filled with the naked bodies of soldiers awaiting their appointment with the undertaker, protests were raised. Such incidents gave rise to indignant newspaper articles and complaints from relief societies, which campaigned for better treatment of the nation’s soldiers, both living and dead. Chaplains rallied at the Washington YMCA to call attention to another scandal: ordinary solders were being sent to their graves with no religious rites to mark their passage. The War Department would eventually correct this oversight, even if it meant a lone, overworked minister had to dash around the cemetery all day murmuring a few lines of scripture over forty or fifty fresh graves.

By the middle of 1862, Washington’s private cemeteries and graveyards were filled well beyond capacity. On July 17, President Lincoln signed a new law creating the first military cemeteries on US soil. This bill empowered the president to purchase new cemetery grounds <QUOTE> wherever in his opinion it shall be expedient… for the soldiers who shall die in the service of the country. <END QUOTE> As a result of this legislation, 14 military cemeteries were created by the end of 1862 including one at what is today known as the Soldier’s Home in Washington, DC and another in nearby Alexandria, Virginia.

Just as the cemeteries around the national capital were rapidly filling with new occupants, the District itself was rapidly growing from a village to a small city. While many of the new residents were service members and government workers, there was also a steady stream of African American refugees. In April 1862, President Lincoln signed the first Emancipation Proclamation, freeing just those slaves in the capitol, about 14,000 individuals at the time. Of these, at least 4,200 had fled slavery in the south and settled in Washington. By the war’s end, the District’s black population would swell to as many as 40,000. This later surge was a result of the more famous Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which liberated three and a half million slaves in the rebellious states. 

Nearly 1,000 of these refugees settled in a squalid congested neighborhood of flimsy shacks surrounded by disease and disappointment – all within sight of the Capitol building. While military officials and the newly formed Freedmen’s Relief Association provided food, clothing, shelter, and schooling for many of these former slaves, it was impossible to keep pace with the torrent of new arrivals. Typhoid fever soon broke out in the Duff’s Green Row section of the Freedman’s Village near the site of today’s Supreme Court building. The afflicted were quarantined on site and those with no symptoms were relocated to an army camp on the northern edge of the city. This new location was no better and was described as: “a mud hole, with one end of the site situated in a former brickyard, the other in an old cemetery... The camp’s water, drawn from wells that were drying up, triggered a massive outbreak of dysentery.” 

After medical authorities expressed concern over the horrible conditions in the camp – illness was claiming at least five lives a day, and probably more – Lieutenant Colonel Elias M. Greene, chief of the quartermaster’s Washington Department proposed a fix that would bolster the war effort, improve living conditions for the former slaves, and enlarge the Union presence at Arlington. Without mentioning Lee by name, Greene “urged the War Department to establish a new freedmen’s camp on those lands south of the Potomac that had been abandoned by rebel owners and are now lying idle.” He was obviously talking about Arlington and its rich bottomlands. Greene further reported that the unused outbuildings and existing slave quarters could easily accommodate anywhere from 500 to 750 new residents in desperate need of shelter. Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton approved Greene’s proposal on the spot and on May 22, 1863, General Order Number 28 directed Greene to take responsibility for this project. Within days, freedmen began moving to Arlington where they lived under the joint patronage of the quartermaster’s office and the American Missionary Association. It is interesting to note that the first wave of former slaves to move on to the property contained several individuals who had been owned by the Lee family. This village would eventually grow into a community of fifteen hundred, with a hospital, two churches, a home for the aged, and schools for both children and adults. The adults were trained as seamstresses, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and carpenters. The idea was that people would live in the camp for a short time while they learned a trade and would then find a job and establish a home elsewhere. While some did move on, many stayed at Arlington for decades. 

Now that the federal government had established such a physical presence on the Lee estate, it moved to secure a legal title to the property. Congress had laid the groundwork for seizing the title to Arlington more than a year before the Freedman’s Village was established there. In June 1862, legislation was passed allowing for direct taxing in the <QUOTE> insurrectionary districts <END QUOTE>. Meant as a way to directly punish those supporting the rebellion, the legislation allowed federal commissioners to assess and collect taxes on real estate in Confederate territory. Once assessed, these taxes had to be paid in person and if they were not, the commissioners could legally sell the property. With that in mind, a tax of $92.07 (about $1400 today) was levied on the 1,100 acre Arlington Plantation. Obviously, the wife of the man who had become the senior general of the Confederate military was not going to present herself in person to the U.S government but she did try to pay the tax. Claiming to be unable to leave Richmond due to deteriorating health and the ongoing war – both legitimate concerns – Mrs. Lee sent her cousin Phillip R. Fendall in her place. When Fendall presented himself to the commission in Alexandria to pay the tax bill, he was turned away for not being the property’s legitimate owner and a date was set to sell the property at public auction. On the frigid morning of January 11, 1864, a single bid for the property was placed and the federal government purchased Arlington Plantation “for Government use, for war, military, charitable, and educational purposes.” The property sold for $26,800, far less than its assessed value of $34,100.

As 1864 wore on, new battalions of wounded soldiers laid dying in Washington hospitals, quickly filling the newly established national cemeteries. With Union forces focused on winning the war, little attention was paid to caring for the dead. Burial mounds eroded and caved in at sites in Washington and Alexandria, pools of standing water spread over graves, and wooden headboards rotted away and disappeared in the mud. A quartermaster report noted that the headboards that did remain were nearly illegible after a few months. As the piles of corpses and the stench of death that lay over the city prompted new complaints from war weary citizens, federal officials began scouting for new burial grounds. They quickly settled on the newly acquired Arlington plantation.

Next week, we will talk about the first burials at Arlington – an act of improvisation born of necessity and more than a touch of vengeance on the part of one senior Union officer. Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. And as always: “Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.”

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