On Hallowed Ground (40 page)

APPENDIX I

ARLINGTON CHRONOLOGY

JUNE 30, 1831
Mary Anna Custis marries Robert E. Lee at Arlington House.

APRIL 12, 1861
Confederates fire on Fort Sumter, precipitating the Civil War.

APRIL 17, 1861
Virginia convention votes to secede from the Union.

APRIL 18, 1861
Francis P. Blair Sr. offers Lee command of Union forces in the field.

APRIL 20–23, 1861
Robert E. Lee resigns from the Union Army, leaves Arlington, and accepts command of Virginia’s military forces.

MAY 15, 1861
Mary Custis Lee leaves Arlington, leaving the keys to the mansion with Selina Gray a trusted slave and housekeeper.

MAY 24, 1861
Some 14,000 Federal troops cross the river to Virginia, taking control of Alexandria, bridge crossings, and the Lees’ Arlington
estate.

JUNE 1861
Virginia joins the Confederacy, which transfers its capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. Lee is given
the rank of brigadier general and named as chief military advisor to Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

JULY 21, 1861
The first major battle of the Civil War takes place at Manassas, Virginia, where the Federals suffer 2,700 casualties, the
Confederates 2,000. Because of the disappointing Union showing, Gen. George Mc-Clellan replaces Gen. Irvin McDowell as commander
of the Army of the Potomac.

JANUARY 2, 1862
Secretary of War Simon Cameron assigns Union officers responsibility of feeding and clothing slaves on the Arlington estate.

APRIL 16, 1862
Congress emancipates all slaves in the District of Columbia. Primitive camps are established for freedmen in Washington.

MAY 31, 1862
When Gen. Joseph E. Johnston is wounded in the Peninsula Campaign, Robert E. Lee takes command of Confederate forces in Virginia.

JUNE 7, 1862
Congress passes an act to collect taxes from the “Insurrectionary Districts of the United States.” Under the new law, the
value of Arlington is assessed at $26,810. When Mrs. Lee fails to pay the tax of $92.07 in person, the property is purchased
by the federal government at a tax sale.

JULY 17, 1862
War deaths mount at an unexpected pace, leaving the government poorly prepared to bury its fighting men. Congress creates
a national cemetery system to accommodate “the soldiers who shall die in the service of the country.” New cemeteries are established
in Alexandria and the District of Columbia.

JULY 1862
During the bruising Peninsula Campaign below Richmond, Union Brig. Gen. Daniel Butterfield asks his bugler Oliver Wilcox
Norton to change the standard lights out call, which results in a new tune, called Taps.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1862
McClellan batters Lee’s forces at the Battle of Antietam, which costs the Federals 12,000 deaths and the Confederates a proportionate
number. Five days after Antietam, President Lincoln announces a general Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in Confederate
states. The new order is scheduled to take effect in January 1863.

JANUARY 1863
The Emancipation Proclamation brings a flood of black refugees to Washington, D.C., overwhelming the freedmen’s camps established for them.

MAY 5, 1863
Lt. Col. Elias M. Greene proposes a new Freedman’s Village at Arlington to accommodate former slaves. Formally dedicated
in December, the village grows to a population of 1,500, reinforcing the federal presence at Arlington.

MAY 4, 1864
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, determined to end the war, crosses the Rapidan River of Virginia to face Robert E. Lee in forty days
of almost continuous fighting. Their bloody exchange creates more than 80,000 casualties. When cemeteries in the capital run
out of space, the Union quartermaster, Brig. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, begins unofficially burying war casualties on Lee’s
Arlington estate

MAY 13, 1864
Pvt. William Henry Christman of the 67th Pennsylvania Infantry is the first soldier buried at Arlington, on the edge of the
property near a small cemetery for slaves. With cemeteries overflowing and deaths mounting, Edwin M. Stanton, secretary of
war, asks Meigs to recommend new national burial sites.

JUNE 15, 1864
Meigs proposes that 200 acres at Arlington should be taken for a national military cemetery. Stanton approves and Meigs orders
burials around Lee’s mansion to prevent the family’s return to Arlington.

APRIL 9, 1865
Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House.

FEBRUARY 1866
Robert E. Lee returns to Washington to testify before Congress but avoids visiting Arlington. He consults lawyers about reclaiming the property.

APRIL 1866
Meigs orders a huge pit dug in Mrs. Lee’s garden and fills it with the remains of 2,111 unknown Civil War dead.

1868
Gen. John Alexander Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, designates May 30, 1868, as “Decoration
Day” to honor the Union war dead. It is, in effect, the first Memorial Day.

DECEMBER 25, 1868
President Andrew Johnson declares amnesty for all former Confederates.

1870
Robert E. Lee dies. Mrs. Lee immediately petitions the Senate to disinter thousands of those buried at Arlington and return
the property to her. Her appeal is soundly defeated.

JUNE 1873
Mary Custis Lee returns to visit Arlington for the last time. She dies five months later.

1873
Congress approves a free white marble marker for each service member buried at Arlington.

1874
The Old Amphitheater, a bowl encircled by wooden colonnades, is dedicated at Arlington, where it is used for gatherings of
veterans’ groups.

1877
After unsuccessfully petitioning Congress to restore Arlington to his family, George Washington Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee’s eldest son, goes to court to have Arlington returned to his family.

DECEMBER 4, 1882
The Supreme Court, holding that Arlington was seized illegally during the Civil War, rules in Custis Lee’s favor. He sells
the property to the government for $150,000, its fair market value.

DECEMBER 7, 1887
Residents of Freedman’s Village are ordered to leave Arlington, where they have been living since the Civil War.

1888
Congress declares Memorial Day a national holiday.

1889
The cemetery annexes 142 adjoining acres, bringing the total acreage to 342.

1892
Montgomery C. Meigs is buried near the Lee mansion, where he is surrounded by the graves of family members and by prominent
Union officers.

1892
The first Revolutionary War casualties are brought to Arlington National Cemetery, signaling a change in status for Arlington.
It is becoming an important symbol for the nation.

1897
The cemetery annexes 56 acres, bringing Arlington’s total to almost 400.

1898
The U.S.S.
Maine
explodes and sinks in Havana Harbor, killing 260 and precipitating the Spanish-American War.

1899
More than 160 of the dead from the
Maine
explosion are buried at Arlington under a mast salvaged from the ship.

1900
The last of the freedmen are turned out of Arlington. Their lands, scattered over 400 acres, are turned over to the Agriculture
Department, which establishes an experimental farm.

1900
In the spirit of conciliation marking a new century, Congress approves a new Confederate Section at Arlington, where almost
500 Rebel soldiers are reburied from Washington.

1903
Arlington is up to 300 funerals a year. Burials total 19,000.

1905
Fourteen unknowns from the War of 1812 are reburied at Arlington; most are thought to be marines.

JANUARY 1906
Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler, a Confederate cavalry officer who later led Union troops in the Spanish-American War, is buried
among Union officers at Arlington.

SEPTEMBER 1908
Lt. Thomas Selfridge ushers in the age of military aviation at Fort Myer, flying in a demonstration flight with Orville Wright.
Selfridge dies when the plane crashes. The nation’s first casualty of powered flight, he is buried at Arlington.

1909
Pierre Charles L’Enfant, veteran of the Revolutionary War and architect of Washington’s original city plan, is exhumed and buried just in front of the Lee mansion, with a fine view of the capital he designed.

NOVEMBER 12, 1912
A cornerstone is laid for the new Confederate Memorial, where former enemies come together for a ceremony of reunion.

AUGUST 1914
World War I begins.

NOVEMBER 11, 1918
The Armistice ends World War I, which claims the lives of 116,516 Americans.

1920
Arctic explorer Rear Adm. Robert E. Peary is buried. The new Memorial Amphitheater, an imposing white marble bowl built to
the south of the Lee mansion, is dedicated.

DECEMBER 21, 1920
Rep. Hamilton Fish, an Army officer who saw action in the war, introduces legislation to bring an unknown American soldier
for burial in the United States.

NOVEMBER 11, 1921
With President Warren G. Harding officiating, the Unknown Soldier of World War I is buried under the plaza of the new Memorial
Amphitheater at Arlington. The grave becomes a symbolic focus for the cemetery.

1924
Congress authorizes the transfer of 400 acres from the Agriculture Department’s Experimental Farm to the Army, which holds
the land for possible use at Arlington and Fort Myer.

1925
Congress authorizes the restoration of Arlington House, in part to recognize Robert E. Lee’s role in reunifying the country
after the Civil War.

1926
Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the president and a former secretary of war, is buried at Arlington.

1929
James Parks, former Arlington slave, is buried in special ceremonies at the national cemetery.

1930
William Howard Taft becomes the first president to be buried at Arlington.

JANUARY 16, 1932
Memorial Bridge, connecting the Lincoln Memorial with Arlington National Cemetery, is dedicated by President Herbert Hoover.
The bridge, intended to link North and South symbolically, also unifies the city’s landscape design.

1933
The National Park Service takes jurisdiction of the Arlington mansion and more than 20 acres of land surrounding it.

1937
The Tomb of the Unknown is placed under round-the-clock guard.

1939
Adolf Hitler invades Poland, triggering World War II.

1940
With war raging in Europe, plans advance for a massive new War Department building—the Pentagon—at Arlington. President Franklin
Roosevelt moves the building to a less objectionable site after Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and others complain
that the plans would spoil views from the Lee mansion. Burials reach 49,927 before the United States enters World War II.

DECEMBER 7, 1941
Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, drawing the United States into war.

1941
President Roosevelt gives Ignace Paderewski, the musician and Polish statesman, temporary burial at Arlington, in a crypt
under the U.S.S.
Maine
Memorial.

1948
Gen. John J. Pershing is buried among the simple graves of men he commanded in World War I. His gravestone, a plain government-issue
marker, sets an example for other officers at Arlington.

1948
President Harry S. Truman orders integration of the Army, which leads to desegregation of burial plots at Arlington.

1950
The total number of Arlington burials passes 70,000.

JANUARY 2, 1951
Lt. Gen. Walton H. “Johnnie” Walker, killed in a jeep accident in the Korean conflict, is promoted to four-star rank and
given a prominent burial at Arlington. His prompt return to the United States leads to a new policy of “concurrent return,”
by which service members are sent home for burial during wartime.

1955
The Arlington mansion is designated as a national memorial to Gen. Robert E. Lee. The superintendent of Arlington, John C.
Metzler Sr., orders the first trenching machines for digging graves at Arlington.

MAY 30, 1958
Unknowns from World War II and the Korean conflict are buried on the amphitheater plaza, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower
officiating.

1959
Gen. George C. Marshall, five-star general, secretary of state, secretary of defense, and Nobel Prize laureate, is buried
at Arlington. Interments reach 100,000 this year.

1961
One of the first to die in a nuclear accident in the United States, Spec. 4 Richard Leroy McKinley is buried at Arlington.
His casket is lined with lead and sealed in concrete.

NOVEMBER 22, 1963
President John F. Kennedy is killed. His burial at Arlington, nationally televised, is the first for a sitting present at
the cemetery. After his death, visits to Arlington jump to 7 million a year. Requests for burial at Arlington also increase,
necessitating a tightening of burial restrictions.

1966
Arlington plans to annex 200 acres from the South Post of Fort Myer, which will bring the cemetery’s total acreage to more
than 600 by the late 1970s.