On Hallowed Ground (42 page)

For more detailed information, write to:

The Superintendent, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA 22211 or visit
www.arlingtoncemetery.org

NOTES AND SOURCES

Any reader who has gotten this far knows that
On Hallowed Ground
reaches across a broad expanse of time and geography, far beyond the well-fenced borders of Arlington National Cemetery.
For this reason, I am indebted to an army of writers who have gone before me, exploring parts of the Arlington story I had
no hope of mastering to the extent they have done. I freely acknowledge my obligation to:

Ernest B. Furgurson and the late Margaret Leech, for their studies of Washington in the Civil War,
Freedom Rising
and
Reveille in Washington
, respectively, and to Margaret Leech for her book
In the Days of McKinley
, which treats the McKinley presidency and the Spanish-American War.

The best recent biography of Robert E. Lee is
Reading the Man
, brilliantly researched and written by Elizabeth Brown Pryor. Her book should be read in apposition to Emory Thomas’s
Robert E. Lee
. Thomas judges his subject by what Lee
did
, Pryor by what Lee
said
or wrote. Both make for compelling reading. The most thorough study of Lee is the late Douglas Southall Freeman’s four-volume
R. E.
Lee: A Biography
, considered to be inexcusably old-fashioned and worshipful these days—but it is essential reading for anyone exploring the
general’s life. Murray H. Nelligan, a former historian for the National Park Service, has written the definitive study of
the Lee family estate and its restoration in
Arlington House
.

No history of Arlington National Cemetery would be complete without attention to the clear-eyed work of Drew Gilpin Faust,
whose book
This Republic of Suffering
examines American attitudes toward death at the time of the Civil War and recounts the nation’s remarkable effort to recover,
rebury, and honor those sacrificed to the conflict.

For much of the material on Washington’s landscape design and Arlington’s place in it, I leaned on
Grand Avenues
, an entertaining and diligently researched study of Pierre L’En-fant by Scott W. Berg. Jennifer Hanna’s book
Cultural Landscape Report: Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Mansion
, is a detailed study of how the people living and working at Arlington have shaped its character, from precolonial times
to the present.

The late Barbara Tuchman provides a beautifully written and thoroughly documented account of conditions leading to World War
I in
The Proud Tower
and in her magisterial
The Guns of August
. By far the best single volume on that conflict is John Keegan’s
The World War
. To examine the traditions that inspired Americans to honor an unknown serviceman from World War I, see Neil Hanson’s
Unknown Soldiers,
which takes place largely in Europe but includes an excellent chapter on the Unknown’s path to Arlington.

Thomas B. Allen and Paul Dickson, two friends from Washington, D.C., documented the veterans’ march on the capital following World War I in their book,
The Bonus Army
, which provided material for my treatment of the subject.

The late William Manchester’s minute-by-minute account of President Kennedy’s funeral,
The Death of a President
, was the starting point for Chapter 12. I benefited greatly from selected portions of Manchester’s research files, which
were generously made available to me by Wesleyan University. Recent oral histories gathered by Kenneth S. Pond and other members
of the Army’s Old Guard provided fresh perspectives on an exhaustively covered event.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge an enormous debt to Steve Vogel of The
Washington Post
. His recent book,
The Pentagon: A History
, is a marvel of painstaking research and fine storytelling, the bedrock on which my Chapter 10 was constructed.

PROLOGUE

1
. Thucydides,
History of the Peloponnesian Wars
(New York: Penguin Books, 1972) 143.

2
. Caroline Alexander, “Across the River Styx,”
New Yorker
, Nov. 25, 2004, 47

1: LEAVING ARLINGTON

1
. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A
Biography,
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), I: 440.

3
. Margaret Leech,
Reveille in Washington
: 1860–1865 (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1941), 56-64.

4
. Ibid.; Ernest B. Furgurson,
Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 63-98.

5
. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, May 11, May 25, June 11, Dec. 25, 1861; Robert E. Lee to Mildred Lee, Dec. 25, 1862,
D-E Collection, LOC; Robert E. Lee to G. W. C. Lee, Mar. 17, 1858, in Murray Nelligan,
Arlington House: The Story of the Lee Mansion Historical Monument
(Burke, VA: Chatelaine Press, 2005), 404.

9
. Nelligan, 126; Godfrey T. Vigne,
Six Months in America
(London: Whittaker, Treacher & Co., 1831), 147.

10
. Emory M. Thomas,
Robert E. Lee
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 144.

14
. Slaves also escaped when Custis was running the plantation. He offered a $50 reward for the return of a twenty-four-year-old
named Eleanor.
Daily National Intelligencer
, Oct. 29, 1829, in AHA.

18
. Robert E. Lee to E. S. Quirk, March 1, 1866, in Michael Fellman,
The Making of Robert E. Lee
(New York: Random House, 2000), 67.

28
. Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin, eds.,
The wartime Papers of R. E. Lee
(New York: Bramhall House, 1961), 3.

30
. J. William Jones,
Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of General Robert E. Lee
(New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1875), 141.

33
. Robert E. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 20, 1861,
Wartime Papers,
10.

36
. George L. Upshur,
As I
Recall Them: Memories of Crowded Years
(New York: Wilson-Erickson, Inc. 1936), 16.

37
. Grace H. Sharp, “Colored Servant of Adopted Son of George Washington,”
Christian Science Monitor
, Sept. 24, 1924. The slave James Parks was born at Arlington, spent most of the war there, and continued to work there as
a laborer after the war. Reporters and historians describe him as an honest witness who never exaggerated his role and admitted
it when he could not provide answers. Although his memory was generally reliable, he confused a few facts in old age—but not
many. I have quoted him accurately, but in the interest of clarity, I have translated into standard English the stereo typical
dialect ascribed to him.

39
. Robert E. Lee to Simon Cameron, April 20, 1861, in
Wartime Papers
, 9.

40
. Robert E. Lee to Winfield Scott, April 20, 1861, in
Wartime Papers
, 8–9.

41
. Robert E. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 20, 1861, in
Wartime Papers
, 10–11.

42
. Robert E. Lee to Mrs. Anne Lee Marshall, April 20, 1861, in
Wartime Papers
, 9–10.

45
. W. W. Scott, “Some Reminiscences of Famous Men,”
Southern Magazine
, July 1894.

46
. Robert E. Lee, “Speech to the Virginia Commission Upon Acceptance of Command of Virginia Forces,” April 23, 1861, and
Robert E. Lee, “General Orders, No. 1,” April 23, 1861, both in
Wartime Papers
, 11.

2: OCCUPATION

1
. Mary Custis Lee, “Manuscript Statement,” Sept. 1866, in Murray Nelligan,
Arlington House: The Story of the Lee Mansion Historical Monument
(Burke, VA: Chatelaine Press, 2005), 393.

6
. Mary Custis Lee to Robert E. Lee, May 9, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC; see also Jennifer Hanna,
Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, Cultural Landscape Report
(Washington D.C.: National Park Service, 2001), 65.

7
. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, April 26, 1861, in The
wartime Papers of R. E. Lee,
ed. Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin (New York: Bramhall House, 1961), 13.

8
. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, April 30, 1861, in
Wartime Papers
, 15.

9
. “Encampment of the Fire Zouaves,” The
New York Daily Tribune
, May 10, 1861, in AHA.

10
. The
New York Daily Tribune
, May 17, 1861, in AHA.

14
. The
New York Daily Tribune
, May 9, 1861, in AHA.

15
. Ernest B. Furgurson,
Freedom Rising:
Washington
in the Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 89.

16
. David W. Miller,
Second Only to Grant
(Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 2000), 89–90.