Arlington Cemetery Established: Honoring Fallen Soldiers

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton designated two hundred acres of Robert E. Lee's former estate in Arlington, Virginia, as a military cemetery on June 15, 1864, during the bloodiest phase of the Civil War. The decision was partly practical and partly personal. Washington's existing military cemeteries were running out of space as casualties mounted from Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign, but the choice of Lee's property was also deliberate. Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, who despised Lee as a traitor, wanted to ensure that the Confederate general could never return home. Meigs ordered the first graves dug in the rose garden near the Arlington House mansion, specifically to render the property unsuitable for residential use. The first soldier buried at Arlington was Private William Henry Christman of the 67th Pennsylvania Infantry, interred on May 13, 1864, before the formal designation. By the end of the Civil War, over 16,000 Union soldiers were buried on the grounds, along with roughly 1,500 formerly enslaved people who had died at the Freedman's Village established on the property. The Lee family contested the seizure for decades. In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Lee that the government had taken the property without due process. Congress then purchased the estate from Lee's son, George Washington Custis Lee, for $150,000, roughly $4.7 million in today's dollars, legitimizing the cemetery's continued existence. Arlington National Cemetery now covers 639 acres and contains more than 400,000 graves, including those of veterans from every American conflict since the Civil War. President John F. Kennedy is buried there, his grave marked by an eternal flame. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, established in 1921, is guarded twenty-four hours a day by soldiers of the 3rd United States Infantry Regiment.